EVENT - Active Travel: New Data, New Insights

Please note the change of date from 16 February to 9 March. The programme and event will remain the same in structure and content, and we hope everyone will still be able to attend. For those who had registered for 16 February, your registration is automatically transferred to 9 March and you do not need to re-register. If you are unfortunately no longer able to attend, please cancel your ticket via Eventbrite. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Active travel is a key driver towards supporting healthy outcomes for people and the environment. This seminar presents the latest data research on active travel, showing how different types of data can enhance understanding and insights into active travel and its outcomes in Scotland.

13:00 - Introduction and Welcome Chair: Professor Chris Dibben, Director of Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research

13:05 - Measuring active travel with digital footprints - David McArthur, Urban Big Data Centre. Encouraging active travel is increasing acknowledged as an important way in which we can decarbonise transport. One way of encouraging active travel is to provide better infrastructure. However, to understand what works we need to know where people walk, wheel and cycle. Such data are not typically easily available. In this talk, we consider how digital footprint data might help address this gap. We will consider data from apps, sensors, and cameras.

13:20 - Understanding the health benefits of active commuting in a Scottish context - Bruce Whyte, Glasgow Centre for Population Health. This talk will describe a comparative analysis of hospitalisation and mortality among a cohort of active and non-active commuters in Scotland and will be set within the current policy context relating to active travel.

13:35 - Does cycling to work benefit mental health? - Laurie Berrie, Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research. Active commuting is an important part of The Scottish Government 2030 Vision for Active Travel; they would like to see walking and cycling as the most popular choice for shorter, everyday journeys. Here, we look at whether cycling to work appears to have a positive effect on mental health. Although there are complexities in determining causal effects from observational data, we employ a quasi-experimental design to address this along with making use of linked administrative data.

13:45 - Discussion and active travel policy directions for future – how can data help?