Integration of BIM and GIS for formal representation of walkability for safe routes to school programs

Safe Routes To School (SRTS) programs improve safety and health conditions as well as reduce the energy consumption and CO₂ emissions by encouraging more children to walk to school. Implementation of the programs requires improved infrastructure to create a safe walking environment to school. To achieve this goal, program participants should comprehensively and consistently evaluate the existing walking environments to prioritize the infrastructure required for improvement. However, in current practice, this evaluation process is challenging due to the lack of formal representation of the existing walking environments. To overcome this limitation, our research team developed an ontology required for the Building Information Model (BIM) to consistently and completely provide information about the existing walkability. The team applied this ontology to an elementary school in the United States and visualized the existing walkability by integrating BIM and Geographical Information System (GIS). Based on the visualization result, the team was able to explicitly describe the existing walkability to program participants. Consequently, we highlight that the ontology supports the participants in more consistently and comprehensively evaluating the existing walkability required for implementation of SRTS programs.