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An Objective Index Of Walkability For Research And Planning In The Sydney Metropolitan Region Of New South Wales, Australia: An Ecological Study, Darren J. Mayne, Geoffrey Morgan, Alan Willmore, Nectarios Rose, Bin Jalaludin, Hilary Bambrick, Adrian Bauman

Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute

Background: Walkability describes the capacity of the built environment to support walking for various purposes. This paper describes the construction and validation of two objective walkability indexes for Sydney, Australia.

Methods: Walkability indexes using residential density, intersection density, land use mix, with and without retail floor area ratio were calculated for 5,858 Sydney Census Collection Districts in a geographical information system. Associations between variables were evaluated using Spearman’s rho (ρ). Internal consistency and factor structure of indexes were estimated with Cronbach’s alpha and principal components analysis; convergent and predictive validity were measured using weighted kappa (κw) and by comparison with …

Accounting For Uncertainty In Ecological Analysis: The Strengths And Limitations Of Hierarchical Statistical Modeling, Noel Cressie, Catherine Calder, James Clark, Jay Ver Hoef, Christopher Wikle

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

Analyses of ecological data should account for the uncertainty in the process(es) that generated the data. However, accounting for these uncertainties is a difficult task, since ecology is known for its complexity. Measurement and/or process errors are often the only sources of uncertainty modeled when addressing complex ecological problems, yet analyses should also account for uncertainty in sampling design, in model specification, in parameters governing the specified model, and in initial and boundary conditions. Only then can we be confident in the scientific inferences and forecasts made from an analysis. Probability and statistics provide a framework that accounts for multiple …