A Web-based Public Participation GIS for assessing the age-friendliness of cities: A case study in Tehran,Iran

Senior citizens are commonly regarded as the vulnerable class of society; requiring elderly-friendly urban environments as well as particular municipal services to respond to their specific needs. This study proceeds to design a PPGIS (Public Participation GIS) by means of integrating VGI (Volunteered Geographic Information), GIS and MCDA (Multicriteria Decision Analysis) techniques aiming to evaluate the age-friendliness of cities. The proposed PPGIS assesses the age-friendliness of cities through integrating certain criteria weights determined by the elderly with VGI collected by regular citizens. The system was used to create the age-friendliness map of district # 6 of Tehran, Iran. The resulting map shows that the center of the district is more age-friendly than the other areas. Based on the evaluation results, the majority of citizens found the system to be a suitable tool for evaluating the age-friendliness of the city, collecting VGI related to the elderly’s urban environment and helping urban planners improve the age-friendliness of the city. Nonetheless, a rather small percentage of citizens concur that: (i) the PPGIS is a suitable tool for persuading citizens to participate in the city age-friendliness assessment and that (ii) the PPGIS provides a reliable way for assessing the age-friendliness of cities.