The Walkability Audit FY 2021-22 commences with designing a system to study the Walkability Index of the campus of UIUC and its neighboring areas. The site of intervention is divided into 29 divisions. A 2-level survey is chosen in order to generate an in-depth analysis, the survey questionnaire and a detailed study per division. The questionnaire takes care of overall parameters like pedestrian facilities, maintenance, crosswalks, aesthetics, path size, universal accessibility, shade, buffers etc (more to be added later) and is scored using 0-5 pts. The detailed study identifies and locates existing problems relevant to each division/subdivision individually.

By mid-September 2021, all the walkability parameters and the survey questionnaire will be finalized and the training manual for volunteers will be developed. Volunteers will be provided with maps of their respective subdivisions and trained to correctly observe each parameter and take reference pictures if need be. The data will be collected in the month of October after the training is complete. Volunteers will work in teams and a single division will be documented by 3 different volunteers after which an average of the scores will be generated. This average score is believed to best represent each parameter. Volunteer groups will be kept the same throughout each study level for consistency of scores. The database with scores should be generated at the end of October 2021 after which the Analysis phase of the Walkability Audit will commence.