Project's AI identifies safest walking routes

Description

Researchers from the Uni­versity of Hud­der­sfield and the Uni­versity of Manchester have secured £50,000 of fund­ing for an innov­at­ive project using AI to identify the safest walk­ing routes.

The fund­ing has been alloc­ated through RISE, an accel­er­ated pro­gramme tack­ling viol­ence against women and girls (VAWG), led by research­ers at the Uni­versity of Manchester and its SPRITE+ net­work.

Subject

Pro­fessor Par­kin­son said: “Safer­Street­sAI uses AI to bet­ter under­stand how people exper­i­ence safety in every­day envir­on­ments and how that inform­a­tion can be pos­it­ively used to help cit­izens and poli­cy­makers make more informed decisions. By using com­pu­ta­tional approaches to ana­lyse a large amount of street-level imagery, we can move bey­ond tra­di­tional crime data and provide insights into the envir­on­mental factors that shape per­cep­tions of safety. This allows us to sup­port more informed route choices for indi­vidu­als and provide prac­tical, evid­ence-based guid­ance for plan­ners and local author­it­ies to improve pub­lic spaces.”