Towards the inclusion of wheelchair users in smart city planning through virtual reality simulation

PubDate: June 2020

Teams: Nuremberg Institute of Technology

Writers: Timo Götzelmann；Julian Kreimeier

PDF: Towards the inclusion of wheelchair users in smart city planning through virtual reality simulation

Abstract

The planning of Smart Cities is a complex task. In particular, accessibility rules based on legal regulations but also on empirical values must be observed. However, it is difficult to determine in advance the exact needs of people with disabilities for concrete planning. Previous approaches mainly aimed at existing urban environments. Ideally, citizens should be directly involved in the planning process of buildings and urban environments. For existing urban environments, crowdsourcing approaches exist to obtain suggestions for improvement from citizens. We present a novel approach for the direct integration of wheelchair users in the urban environments to be planned (participatory urban development) in virtual reality. We present an easy-to-reproduce simulator that allows wheelchair users to directly explore the planned buildings and urban environments in a virtual, spatial environment. This means that these 3D models can be commented already in the planning phase and provide valuable information about accessibility.