MSc Thesis AMS Institute - Healthy Built Environment Index: Creating an Assessment Tool for the Built Environment that Evaluates a City District on How Healthy the Living Environment is, through the Use of Geographical Data.

MADE Student Project

The healthy neighborhood is seen as an important means of promoting health and the quality of life for citizens, and reducing differences between citizens. Due to the Environmental Act, municipalities and provinces will soon have to explicitly include health in their environmental policy and formulate Environmental Visions for both the municipal as well as the city district levels. In order to include health in the Environmental Vision, the healthy living environment needs to be evaluated and monitored, but instruments that specifically focus on assessing the healthy built environment on the city district level, are lacking. The aim of this study is to create a Healthy Built Environment Index that assesses the state of the physical living environment in terms of health, and demonstrate its applicability by applying it to a case study (municipality of Amsterdam).
This research applies a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods to develop a framework that measures the state of the healthy built environment using geographical data. This resulted in a Healthy Built Environment Index consisting of 39 indicators divided over 6 domains.

References can be found inside the document.