From Ph.D. to Postdoc: Maryam’s Journey in Enhancing Urban Accessibility

Thesis – Context-Aware Accessibility Assessment of Sidewalks for People with Mobility Impairment Using Their Trajectories

January 27, Université of Tehran, Iran

Maryam Naghdizadeganjahromi is now a post-doc at the CRDIG with Stéphane Roche.

She defended her Ph.D. thesis on January 27 at the University of Tehran in Iran. Meysam Argany, the former Ph.D. student of the Department of Geomatics Sciences (Laval University) who is now an associate professor at the University of Theran was her co-supervisor and Mir Abolfazl Mostafavi was her director.

The research aimed to evaluate and enhance sidewalk accessibility for wheelchair users in urban environments, with a specific focus on Tehran, Iran. It sought to identify and analyze both static and dynamic factors influencing sidewalk accessibility, such as surface conditions, slope, population density, and precipitation. A key achievement was the development of a personalized accessibility model that integrates individual user profiles and mobility experiences, providing a comprehensive and realistic assessment of sidewalk accessibility. Among the methodologies employed, the XGBoost machine learning model demonstrated superior accuracy and efficiency in delivering personalized assessments by effectively incorporating dynamic factors and user-specific data. The adaptive weighting and fuzzy-TOPSIS models also yielded reliable results, though with lower accuracy compared to XGBoost. These accomplishments contribute to advancing urban accessibility by offering a robust framework for evaluating sidewalk accessibility and informing the development of context-aware navigation tools tailored to the needs of wheelchair users.