Accessibility strategies to promote inclusive mobility through multi-objective approach

Abstract

In recent decades, urban mobility has assumed a need for adaptation due to the more significant congestion experienced in cities and the growing focus on sustainability. Several solutions are proposed to help citizens move around in an urban environment. Most are not yet aware of the universal and accessible aspect that these solutions must have. This paper proposes a route support system embedded in a mobile application, Viana+Acessível, using a multi-objective approach. The application aims to promote accessible mobility within the city, contributing to physical and psychological well-being for citizens with reduced mobility, temporary or permanently, such as people with spectrum autism disorder, the visually impaired, wheelchair users, pregnant, and the elderly. For the evaluation of the algorithms, four objective measures were considered: accessibility, slope, time, and length of the paths. The tests carried out with different routing algorithms showed that the A-Star presented the fastest results in terms of execution time compared to the Dijkstra, Floyd–Warshall, and Bellman–Ford. When analysing in a multi-objective approach, time, slope and accessibility were demonstrated to be conflicting objectives. Bi-objective and tri-objective were applied and Pareto front was explored. Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.]