GREENTRAVEL project in full swing!

We are having exciting times at the Digital Geography Lab! 2023 marks the start of the European Research Council -funded project “Greener Urban Travel Environments for Everyone: From measured wellbeing impacts to Big Data analytics” (GREENTRAVEL) – the biggest and longest research project of the lab to date. After months of planning and recruitments, we are happy to announce that the GREENTRAVEL project team is complete, and the project is running at full speed.

The transdisciplinary GREENTRAVEL project runs until 2027 and has a budget of 1.98 million euros. The project focuses on studying the greenery of urban travel environments from various perspectives. More specifically, the project has set out to produce a novel understanding of the quality, availability and wellbeing impacts of green urban travel environments. Moreover, it will produce knowledge on how equally green exposure during travel and related wellbeing impacts are available to urban populations. Ultimately, the project will provide approaches and analysis on where to add greenery to advance equity. The project is led by professor Tuuli Toivonen.

The GREENTRAVEL project team. Photo by Christoph Fink.

Meet the team!

The GREENTRAVEL project brings together talented researchers with various disciplinary backgrounds:

• Tuuli Toivonen is a geographer and a professor of geoinformatics, who has envisioned the GREENTRAVEL project, received the funding from the European Research Council, and leads the project team.
• Silviya Korpilo is a postdoctoral researcher who studies perceptions, preferences and wellbeing impacts related to green travel environments using PPGIS, and ex-situ and in-situ experiments.
• Omkaranathan Ravindran is a VR specialist who designs and implements the Virtual Reality urban environments for ex-situ experiments, featuring elements of greenery, seasonality, and navigation.
• Robert Klein is a doctoral researcher whose work focusses on mapping the dynamics of greenery exposure from the human perspective.
• Elias Willberg is a postdoctoral researcher whose research focuses on modelling accessibility and mobility, and estimating green and other environmental exposures during travel.
• Kerli Müürisepp is a research coordinator who helps to keep the project running, and examines inequalities in environmental exposures during travel.
• Kamyar Hasanzadeh is a university lecturer who teaches several courses in geoinformatics at the Department of Geosciences and Geography. In GREENTRAVEL, he participates in designing the PPGIS survey, and studying daily mobility and green exposure during travel.
• Roope Heinonen is a software developer who develops the Green Paths Routing Tool.
• Rory Taylor is a research assistant who supports data collection and analysis for studying perceptions, preferences and wellbeing impacts related to green travel environments.
• Jussi Torkko is a research assistant who analyses Google Street View images to map greenery from the human perspective.

You are welcome to read more about the team members on the Digital Geography Lab webpage.

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The Digital Geography Lab is an interdisciplinary research team focusing on spatial Big Data analytics for fair and sustainable societies at the University of Helsinki.

The GREENTRAVEL project (2023-2027) is funded by the European Union (ERC, GREENTRAVEL, 101044906). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.