Determining Accessible Sidewalk Width by Extracting Obstacle Information from Point Clouds

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel pipeline that uses 3D point cloud data to estimate obstacle-free sidewalk widths, aiding accessibility planning and city management.

Contribution

It introduces a new method for extracting obstacle information from point clouds to assess sidewalk accessibility, addressing a gap in urban planning tools.

Findings

Successfully applied to Amsterdam data

Provides accurate obstacle detection and width estimation

Supports accessibility improvements for citizens

Abstract

Obstacles on the sidewalk often block the path, limiting passage and resulting in frustration and wasted time, especially for citizens and visitors who use assistive devices (wheelchairs, walkers, strollers, canes, etc). To enable equal participation and use of the city, all citizens should be able to perform and complete their daily activities in a similar amount of time and effort. Therefore, we aim to offer accessibility information regarding sidewalks, so that citizens can better plan their routes, and to help city officials identify the location of bottlenecks and act on them. In this paper we propose a novel pipeline to estimate obstacle-free sidewalk widths based on 3D point cloud data of the city of Amsterdam, as the first step to offer a more complete set of information regarding sidewalk accessibility.