Objective Measurement of Environmental Factors Influencing the Citizens’ Physical Activity, by Employing Geographic Information System, Case Study: Sanandaj city

Physical activity is one of the most important aspects of life that has many environmental, economic, social and health benefits. According to the importance of the public space of cities in the occurrence of these activities, the issue of developing built environments as a framework that can promote physical activities has become of the major issues in urban societies around the world. This research is aimed at objectively measuring the environmental qualities influencing the residents’ physical activities. It has been conducted in an analytical-applied manner, in four areas with a buffer of 500 meters selected from the four urban context of Sanandaj city in Kurdistan province. Through a review of the previous researches, the factors influencing the physical activities have been identified and the data related to each of them have been prepared using the layers of street networks and land uses in geographic information system. The obtained data have been placed in quantitative evaluation formulas related to each criterion. The mentioned evaluations have been studied in a combinational manner and in smartraq and pedestrian orientation indexes, as the two common one. Then, through comparison of the results of the mentioned indexes, the studied areas were classified in groups from high pedestrian oriented to non-pedestrian oriented. The data of physical activities were gathered from 421 inhabitants by questionnaire. The mean of the data has been calculated in SPSS software by variance tests. At the final stage of the research, the relation between pedestrian orientation qualities of the built environment and the level of the residents’ physical activities has been studied by regression analysis. The results of this research indicate the importance of the built environment on the level of physical activity and hence the public health of residents.