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The Global Healthy and Sustainable City Indicators (GHSCI) software is designed to support participation in the Global Observatory of Healthy and Sustainable Cities' 1000 Cities Challenge. The GHSCI software is an open-source tool for measuring, monitoring and reporting on policy and spatial indicators for healthy, sustainable cities worldwide using open or custom data. On this website, you will find instructions and resources to help you calculate and report indicators for healthy and sustainable cities using the GHSCI Software.
Calculating and reporting indicators for healthy and sustainable cities
Getting started guides
Policy indicators
Spatial indicators and reporting software
Where to get help
This site includes instructions for using the GHSCI software and calculating the indicators. Please visit our frequently asked questions (FAQ) page for common issues with software installation,
For further help or if you get stuck, please contact info@healthysustainablecities.org
The Global Healthy and Sustainable City Indicators (GHSCI, or global-indicators) software can be run as code or as an app in your web browser and can be configured to support comparisons within- and between-cities and across time, benchmarking, analysis and monitoring of local policies, tracking progress, and informing interventions towards achieving healthy, equitable and sustainable cities (Figure 1). It also supports generating resources including maps, figures and reports in multiple languages, so these can be made accessible for use by local communities and stakeholders as a source of evidence to advocate for change.
Review the following video to learn more about the software:
Figure 1. The GHSCI tool can be used to create and report on policy and spatial indicators for cities around the world from your web browser, or optionally as code, a Jupyter notebook, or from the command line
Calculate Spatial Indicators
The core set of spatial indicators is calculated for point locations, a small area grid (e.g. 100m), and overall city estimates. Optionally, indicators can also be calculated for custom areas, like administrative boundaries or specific neighbourhoods of interest.
The default core set of spatial urban indicators calculated includes:
- Urban area in square kilometres
- Population density (persons per square kilometre)
- Street connectivity (intersections per square kilometre)
- Access to destinations within 500 meters:
- a supermarket
- a convenience store
- a public transport stop (any; or optionally, regularly serviced)
- a public open space (e.g. park or square; any, or larger than 1.5 hectares)
- A score for access to a range of daily living amenities
- A walkability index
Calculate Policy Indicator
The policy indicators for the 1000 Cities Challenge assess the presence and quality of a wide range of urban and transport policies that contribute to creating healthy and sustainable urban environments.
The policy indicators include:
- Integrated transport and urban planning
- Air pollution
- Density
- Demand management
- Diversity
- Destination proximity
- Desirability
- Transport infrastructure investment by mode
- Disaster mitigation
- Design
- Destination accessibility
- Distribution of employment
- Distance to public transport
Generate Resources
The resulting city-specific resources can be used to provide evidence to support policymakers and planners to strengthen urban policy, target interventions within cities, compare performance across cities, and when measured across time can be used to monitor progress towards achieving urban design goals for reducing inequities. Moreover, they provide a rich source of data for those advocating for disadvantaged and vulnerable community populations.
Generated outputs include:
- Summary of configuration parameters used for analysis (.yml file)
- Processing log detailing the analyses undertaken (.txt file)
- Geopackage of indicator results and spatial features including points and areas of interest and pedestrian network (.gpkg)
- CSV files for indicator results (.csv)
- Data dictionaries (.csv and .xlsx files)
- ISO19115 metadata (.xml and .yml files)
- Analysis report (pdf)
- Policy and spatial indicator report, optionally in multiple languages (.pdf)
- Figures and maps, optionally in multiple languages (.jpg)
The software is designed to be used by local experts as part of multi-disciplinary teams participating in the 1000 Cities Challenge; but anyone (e.g. students, enthusiasts) can use the open-source software.
Additional Resources
Additional resources can be found on the GOHSC website “Resources” tab
• Review the webinars
• Review the training videos
• Review our publications
• Installation and usage of the software are detailed on our software website at https://healthysustainablecities.github.io/software/