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. 2020 Oct 9;17(20):7361.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph17207361.

Integrated Impact Assessment of Active Travel: Expanding the Scope of the Health Economic Assessment Tool (HEAT) for Walking and Cycling

Thomas Götschi  1 , Sonja Kahlmeier  2 , Alberto Castro  3 , Christian Brand  4 , Nick Cavill  5 , Paul Kelly  6 , Christoph Lieb  7 , David Rojas-Rueda  8 , James Woodcock  9 , Francesca Racioppi  10
Affiliations

Integrated Impact Assessment of Active Travel: Expanding the Scope of the Health Economic Assessment Tool (HEAT) for Walking and Cycling

Thomas Götschi et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

The World Health Organization's Health Economic Assessment Tool (HEAT) for walking and cycling is a user-friendly web-based tool to assess the health impacts of active travel. HEAT, developed over 10 years ago, has been used by researchers, planners and policymakers alike in appraisals of walking and cycling policies at both national and more local scales. HEAT has undergone regular upgrades adopting the latest scientific evidence. This article presents the most recent upgrades of the tool. The health impacts of walking and/or cycling in a specified population are quantified in terms of premature deaths avoided (or caused). In addition to the calculation of benefits derived from physical activity, HEAT was recently expanded to include assessments of the burden associated with air pollution exposure and crash risks while walking or cycling. Further, the impacts on carbon emissions from mode shifts to active travel modes can now be assessed. The monetization of impacts using Value of Statistical Life and Social Costs of Carbon now uses country-specific values. As active travel inherently results in often substantial health benefits as well as not always negligible risks, assessments of active travel behavior or policies are incomplete without considering health implications. The recent developments of HEAT make it easier than ever to obtain ballpark estimates of health impacts and carbon emissions related to walking and cycling.

Keywords: active transportation; air pollution; carbon emissions; health impact assessment; monetization; online tool; physical activity; traffic safety.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Impact pathways of the Health Economic Assessment Tool for walking and cycling (HEAT). Newly added pathways are highlighted in grey.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Schematic illustration of comparative risk assessment approach. Illustration depicts an example where increase in active travel from reference case to comparison case reduces mortality, i.e., is beneficial. Thus, attributable deaths in this case are “prevented deaths”. The top dotted line depicts the mortality level for a case without any active travel. In the reference case with lower active travel, fewer deaths are prevented, while in the comparison case with higher active travel more deaths are prevented due to active travel (Note: HEAT applies linear dose–response functions for physical activity, air pollution and crash risks).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Schematic illustration of the temporal sequence in a HEAT assessment for a doubling of active travel over 20 years, relative to a reference case set to 100 (arbitrary unit). Over five years of uptake time, the comparison case will reach 200. The build-up of health impacts, and therefore the value of impacts, reaches the maximum after 5-year period (i.e., in 2030), and stays constant thereafter. The last category displays the economic values of impacts discounted to year 2020 values.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Flow of the Health Economic Assessment Tool for walking and cycling.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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