OUTDOORS. GREEN. DIGITAL.

USING SMART DIGITISATION TO PROMOTE ACTIVITY, FITNESS AND HEALTH

Authors:   Thorsten Grießer, Managing Director, Planet-O GmbH

Alexander Blocher, Managing Director, Planet-O GmbH

Graphics: Planet-O GmbH, www.planet-o.eu

In the last few years, many urban and rural authorities and institutions have addressed the increasingly important issue of outdoor activities and sports for their residents and have often taken positive decisions in favour of funding and building new outdoor sports facilities. In their guest article, Thorsten Grießer and Alexander Blocher make the case for underpinning current and future decisions with robust data on usage frequency, occupancy rate, capacity utilisation and other parameters.

The funding and construction of new outdoor sports facilities is an important element in developing and augmenting a green health boost to a municipality's activity and exercise infrastructure with implications for society as a whole. At many of these facilities, the focus is on implementing low­threshold exercise programmes to develop and maintain general physical fitness and make exercise enjoyable. Among other things, public outdoor fitness and health infrastructure should be a component in improving the health and wellbeing of users and making the neighbourhood more attractive and more active.

Low-threshold exercise opportunities

However, the recent past has also revealed the need to develop these sports facilities further – in terms of digitisation, carbon neutrality, smart security, attractive cool and green spaces, 24/7 use, methodical, service­ driven and hybrid support from various coaches, and strategic standardisation. At the same time, the aim and focus should be to inspire as many (not yet active) people as possible to cultivate an active, healthy and sustainable lifestyle in the fresh air in green surroundings.

To achieve this goal, new and innovative action is needed alongside the simple – even temporary – installation of sports facilities or outdoor sports equipment in order to reach more target groups at the same time, increase the effectiveness of these measures and make user behaviour visible and measurable in the long term with a variety of robust data.

ures mentioned have already been scientifically validated. A comprehensive meta­analysis from the EU project "#Digital Active Regions Europe Outdoor ­ #DARE­ O" funded by the European Union, investigated the effectiveness of the development and expansion of public exercise and health infrastructure on physical activity. The meta­analysis entitled "Does the installation or the improvement of existing outdoor parks increase physical activity levels? A systematic review" was conducted by an international panel of researchers from Italy, Spain, Portugal and Germany. 959 potentially relevant scientific articles were included on the basis of specific inclusion criteria, reviewed and evaluated. 26 scientific papers succeeded in satisfying the set inclusion criteria and were included in the effectiveness study.

The review highlights the importance of an interdisciplinary and intersectoral European approach, as the refurbishment of existing or installation of new outdoor fitness parks with the current "traditional" and scientific approach has only a limited impact on physical activity within the population.

#DARE-O Greenbook in six European languages

Project Investigates The Correlation Between Infrastructure And Physical Activity

EU

Although research into public fitness and health infrastructure needs to be expanded further going forward, the meas­

The #DARE-O Greenbook summarises the findings in a 96page brochure. It is available for download free of charge in German, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Croatian. It presents practicable and directly implementable results, findings and approaches to digitisation from the #DARE-O project and also provides a concrete look ahead to relevant, digital fields of action for the future. The goal is to show decision­makers and interested parties in municipalities, regions, political parties, associations and companies forward­looking approaches to sustainably enhancing the attractiveness of existing and new interconnected outdoor facilities on a sound data basis.

Structured, digital and standardised analysis of existing facilities and operations

Qualitative and quantitative assessments of existing facilities serve as a basis for the activation or recommendation of action for the development and expansion of suitable infrastructure. For this purpose, the project developed the first standardised and scientifically tested method for evaluating outdoor fitness and health facilities.

In addition to structural data such as dimensions, number of items of equipment, safety, accessibility and social infrastructure, qualitative and quantitative data are collected using 20 items in five categories in order to make activity spaces comparable in terms of their setting, accessibility, safety, equipment and local conditions.

All the resulting, relevant data points are stored in a digital database in compliance with data protection regulations, cleaned up for further processing and visualised in various ready­for­ dashboarding formats.

With the aid of these digital survey protocols, existing outdoor fitness and health infrastructure can be transposed into a digital format (app, web or similar) that makes sense to users. The visualisations and usage scenarios can be targeted to specific groups and consumption levels measured.

In addition, they can be supplemented with interactive content for digitally and media ­supported activation. Examples of this include interactive maps, training videos for existing equipment, booking systems and the integration of additional stakeholders (clubs, coaches) via hybrid tele ­ care coaching solutions, for example.

Simple and combined access to relevant information

For the first time, users (B2B, B2C) can thus obtain simple and combined access to relevant information on infrastructure that is of high relevance to them. Decision­makers benefit from comparable and validated access to relevant infrastructure data for the development and expansion of suitable infrastructure. With appropriate integration, healthcare providers benefit from direct access to interested individuals and supplement digital solutions with the still very important personal and physical component: the "human being".

Thorsten Grießer, head of the project and CEO of Planet O GmbH, explains: "The typology and categorisation of existing outdoor fitness facilities, as undertaken in the #DARE-O project, is a new gold standard for the industry and unprecedented in this form. While the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) and other organisations attempt to map classically standardised sports facilities such as sports grounds and gyms throughout Germany, we are now supplementing these efforts with the means for a detailed and scientifically sound overall overview of the outdoor fitness and health sector. With #DARE-O, we have taken the first major steps towards Building Information Modelling (BIM), which was previously lacking in this field."

Over 250 existing outdoor fitness locations in the seven EU pilot regions have now been recorded in the project and far beyond. A five-star rating system provides rapid insight into the quality, location, safety and level of activity of a surveyed and rated outdoor exercise location. From now on, and all the more so going forward, it will be possible to visualise the comparability of outdoor locations on a new evaluation level.

The #DARE­ O App and the #DARE­ O Greenbook can be downloaded on www.dare-o.eu

Concrete indicators of effectiveness for exercise infrastructure

In addition to simply analysing the existing infrastructure, it is essential in today's digital age that smart cities, urban and rural authorities, and regions, in their aspiration to provide an active, healthy and liveable environment, directly and validly measure actual activity and therefore the level of use at as many sports locations as possible. With the right intelligent technical infrastructure and the associated digital system, it is possible to record usage frequency, occupancy rate, capacity utilisation and other parameters and transfer them to activity dashboards and scores.

With these new, pioneering tools, it is possible for the first time to gather relevant activity and exercise data in urban areas, e.g. in parks, playgrounds and outdoor locations, in order make the actual level of activity and utilisation and thus also the return on investment of public funding assessable for existing and new outdoor sports spaces. From now on, specific effectiveness indicators and key performance indicators will be available that can be used to model the construction and operation of outdoor exercise systems right from the project planning phase and, above all, after commissioning. This is an important step towards the interconnected, multimedia and intersectorally assessable outdoor fitness and health facility of the future for everyone.

An important task for the future for forward thinkers, sports and health scientists, urban planners, architects, decisionmakers and sports departments is to actively and consciously consider and integrate new demand and marketing tools into planning, implementation and fundraising. This is in the interests of the sustainable and successful measurement of the effectiveness of outdoor spaces as an evaluable, visible and reportable contribution to a successful intervention focussing on activating people and promoting their health.

Location

Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

Client / operator City of Regina Architects P3Architecture Partnership + hcma www.p3arch.com www.hcma.ca

Author Michael Henderson, Principal, hcma

Photos

Grunert Imaging, City of Regina Official opening June 2023

Construction costs CAD 15.5 million (EUR 10.2 million)