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"...when you’re a Stranger": Evaluating Safety Perceptions of (un)familiar Urban Places

Traunmueller, M; Capra, L; Marshall, P; (2016) "...when you’re a Stranger": Evaluating Safety Perceptions of (un)familiar Urban Places. In: Proceedings of the 2nd EAI International Conference on IoT in Urban Space. (pp. pp. 71-77). Association for Computing Machinery (ACM): Tokyo, Japan. Green open access

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Abstract

What makes us feel safe when walking around our cities? Previous research has shown that our perception of safety strongly depends on characteristics of the built environment; separately, research has also shown that safety perceptions depend on the people we encounter on the streets. However, it is not clear how the two relate to one another. In this paper, we propose a quantitative method to investigate this relationship. Using an online crowd–sourcing approach, we collected 5452 safety ratings from over 500 users about images showing various combinations of built environment and people inhabiting it. We applied analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) to the collected data and found that familiarity of the scene is the single most important predictor of our sense of safety. Controlling for familiarity, we identified then what features of the urban environment increase or decrease our safety perception.

Type: Proceedings paper
Title: "...when you’re a Stranger": Evaluating Safety Perceptions of (un)familiar Urban Places
Event: EAI International Conference on IoT in Urban Space
ISBN-13: 978-1-4503-4204-9
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1145/2962735.2962761
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2962735.2962761
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: Safety; Perception; Urban; Environment; Crowdsourcing
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > UCL Interaction Centre
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1489794
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