Nick Tyler - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Nick Tyler

This book is published on the understanding that the author is solely responsible for the stateme... more This book is published on the understanding that the author is solely responsible for the statements made and opinions expressed in it and that its publication does not necessarily imply that such statements and/or opinions are or reflect the views or opinions of the publishers. Whilst every effort has been made to ensure that the statements made and the opinions expressed in this publication provide a safe and accurate guide, no liability or responsibility can be accepted in this respect by the author or publishers. Whilst every reasonable effort has been undertaken by the authors and the publisher to acknowledge copyright on material reproduced, if there has been an oversight please contact the publisher and we will endeavour to correct this upon a reprint.

Frontiers in Medicine

IntroductionVisual processing deficits in Alzheimer's disease are associated with diminished ... more IntroductionVisual processing deficits in Alzheimer's disease are associated with diminished functional independence. While environmental adaptations have been proposed to promote independence, recent guidance gives limited consideration to such deficits and offers conflicting recommendations for people with dementia. We evaluated the effects of clutter and color contrasts on performances of everyday actions in posterior cortical atrophy and memory-led typical Alzheimer's disease.Methods15 patients with posterior cortical atrophy, 11 with typical Alzheimer's disease and 16 healthy controls were asked to pick up a visible target object as part of two pilot repeated-measures investigations from a standing or seated position. Participants picked up the target within a controlled real-world setting under varying environmental conditions: with/without clutter, with/without color contrast cue and far/near target position. Task completion time was recorded using a target-mounte...

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2022

Boundaries define regions of space and are integral to episodic memories. The impact of boundarie... more Boundaries define regions of space and are integral to episodic memories. The impact of boundaries on spatial memory and neural representations of space has been extensively studied in freely-moving rodents. But less is known in humans and many prior studies have employed desktop virtual reality (VR) which lacks the body-based self-motion cues of the physical world, diminishing the potentially strong input from path integration to spatial memory. We replicated a desktop-VR study testing the impact of boundaries on spatial memory (Hartley et al., 2004) in a physical room (2.4m x 2.4m, 2m tall) by having participants (N = 27) learn the location of a circular stool and then after a short delay replace it where they thought they had found it. During the delay, the wall boundaries were either expanded or contracted. We compared performance to groups of participants undergoing the same procedure in a laser-scanned replica in both desktop VR (N = 44) and freely-walking head mounted display (HMD) VR (N = 39) environments. Performance was measured as goodness of fit between the spatial distributions of group responses and seven modelled distributions that prioritised different metrics based on boundary geometry or walking paths to estimate the stool location. The best fitting model was a weighted linear combination of all the geometric spatial models, but an individual model derived from place cell firing in Hartley et al. 2004 also fit well. High levels of disorientation in all three environments prevented detailed analysis on the contribution of path integration. We found identical model fits across the three environments, though desktop VR and HMD-VR appeared more consistent in spatial distributions of group responses than the physical environment and displayed known variations in virtual depth perception. Thus, while human spatial representation appears differentially influenced by environmental boundaries, the influence is similar across virtual and physical environments. Despite differences in body-based cue availability, desktop and HMD-VR allow a good and interchangeable approximation for examining human spatial memory in smallscale physical environments.

The influence of transport policy on technology (Abstract only)

Evaluation of Changes to Bus Stop Design to Benefit Elderly and Disabled People

Throughout Europe, low floor buses are being introduced in order to extend access to more elderly... more Throughout Europe, low floor buses are being introduced in order to extend access to more elderly and disabled people. This will be encouraged in the UK by the forthcoming Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations and in Europe in general by the European Bus and Coach Directive. However, this improvement in vehicle specification does little to help people who cannot enter the bus because of deficiencies in the design of bus stops. The need expressed in the COST 322 report (to reduce the horizontal gap between the bus and the platform at a bus stop) is difficult to achieve if the driver is unable to carry out the appropriate maneuvers. The EXCALIBUR project was set up to investigate and test how infrastructure design could be specified so that both of these problems could be eased. EXCALIBUR developed and tested different designs of bus stop infrastructure in order to determine standards for construction of accessible bus stops. The designs were developed based on the outcome...

Access Audits of Shared Space/Surface Schemes in the UK

PAMELa: a laboratory for testing people and their environment

Catch Me If You Can: Traffic Management for Accessible Rural Bus Stops

Traffic engineering and control, 1999

Once a symbol of declining rural services in the wake of rising car ownership and suburbanisation... more Once a symbol of declining rural services in the wake of rising car ownership and suburbanisation, the rural bus has been enjoying a renaissance in the UK. Nationally the Government's Rural Bus Subsidy Grant provides local authorities £60M a year to support conventional services. To complement this, last year it launched the Rural Bus Challenge, an annual competition for innovative schemes, inviting appropriate bids from councils eager to reverse years of under-funding. Last year the Challenge helped fund 46 schemes worth £11.4M, and as the Government this month begins to examine the hundreds of bids for the second Challenge, it is worth asking where all this innovation is leading. For many urban authorities the case for public transport has been as much about equality of access for all, as about efficient use of road space. But while the Challenge will clearly indirectly help disabled travellers, last year's competition included just three projects billed primarily as acces...

Investigation into Platform Hump Options

This paper is of interest to all stakeholders involved in infrastructure design and development, ... more This paper is of interest to all stakeholders involved in infrastructure design and development, concerned by the sustainability of current approaches and in search of new perspectives which may inform their own practice. These include professionals from all relevant disciplinesfrom engineering, urban planning, governance and environmental scienceas well as concerned members of the general public.

2017 IEEE Life Sciences Conference (LSC), Dec 1, 2017

Manual wheelchair is an effective device for assisting independent life of motor disabled subject... more Manual wheelchair is an effective device for assisting independent life of motor disabled subjects. However, many users of manual wheelchair have been suffered from shoulder pain because propelling the wheelchair needs repetitive movement of upper extremities. The purpose of this study was to examine a validity of using shoulder joint moment in evaluation of load on the users in wheelchair propulsion. Since shoulder joint moment can evaluate mechanical load on the shoulder, the indexes are expected to provide information to help wheelchair propulsion in decreasing of shoulder pain. Two evaluation indexes derived from shoulder joint moment were tested in this paper: FT/MS and FR/MS, which showed contribution of shoulder joint moment (MS) to wheelchair propulsion (tangential force on handrim FT) and to the resultant force on handrim (FR). These indexes were compared to the index FT/FR which was based on previous studies. Measurements of movements during wheelchair propulsion were performed with 3 healthy subjects on stationary wheelchair ergometer under the different conditions of propulsion speed and resistance of ergometer. Correlation coefficient between the proposed indexes and FT/FR were low (-0.51 to 0.10), which suggested that the proposed indexes had different information from the index FT/FR. Change of the index values between low and high propulsion load conditions were different between subjects. These results suggest that using indexes derived from shoulder joint moment would be effective in evaluation of load in wheelchair propulsion.

Journal of Transport Geography, 2019

Transportation, 2018

A recently empirically isolated latent variable in transport choice is symbolism, which examines ... more A recently empirically isolated latent variable in transport choice is symbolism, which examines what people believe their transport choices say to others about them and how they are judged in a social context. Whilst it is well established that symbolism differs vertically across different socioeconomic groups within a country, very little work has been done on how symbolism in transport may differ between similar individuals across nations as a function of national cultural values, and how this may manifest itself in transport choices. If significant differences were to be found then this could have impacts for transport policy formulation and transfer. This paper explores and discusses these issues and concludes that the initial goal of any research into symbolic transport choices across cultures is theoretical fertility, and this is best achieved by adopting the research philosophy of Imre Lakatos, using theory-driven thematic analysis to develop theoretical models for testing. Keywords: latent choice motivation, transport symbolism, national culture, Lakatosian research programmes, mixed methods research, thematic analysis many months first brought the possibility of symbolic transport choices differing across national culture to light. Secondly Dr Alvin Lee at Deakin University for introducing the principal author to the cultural models quoted in this paper. Thirdly Professor David Hensher, Professor Kay Axhausen, and Dr Luis Willumsen, for their insights into latent variables and social segmentation. Finally it would be remiss not to thank the staff of the Centre for Transport studies for their support and feedback during the earlier phases of this work. However, views expressed in this paper belong only to the authors. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. Funding bodies There are no funding bodies for this research.

Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Engineering Sustainability, 2019

There is currently great interest in the creation of sustainable and liveable cities, both in the... more There is currently great interest in the creation of sustainable and liveable cities, both in the UK and globally. While it can be argued that good progress is being made in thinking about the needs of future cities, meeting these needs and aspirations in practice poses major challenges of understanding and measurement (what is meant by these terms and how can progress towards their achievement be measured?), complexity (cities are complex systems of systems with many interacting parts) and resilience (will interventions made today be relevant and effective in the future?). The Liveable Cities research programme created a systematic decision-making method for improving urban sustainability and liveability: the Liveable Cities Method (LCM). The LCM prioritises four criteria – individual and societal well-being, resource security, resource efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions as a proxy for environmental harm – in an interconnected framework and assesses the need for, and the resil...

Transportation Research Procedia, 2016

Nearly 54% of the world's population lives in urban areas and this is set to grow over 2.5 billio... more Nearly 54% of the world's population lives in urban areas and this is set to grow over 2.5 billion people by 2050 (United Nations, 2014). In this context, the question is how to make cities contribute positively to the wellbeing of all their inhabitants and with economic, social and environmental sustainability. Due to increased complexity of their functionality and limitations imposed by the existing uncoordinated frameworks for designing and managing urban systems, cities are already facing great challenges such as resource scarcity, institutional barriers, narrow accounting frameworks, lock-in due to infrastructure, inequality, congestion, crime and diseases, which will only worsen with increased urbanization. As such, innovative tools for planning and engineering coordinated solutions to transform cities' systems are at the heart of sustainable living in the future. As part of the EPSRC programme grant Transforming the Engineering of Cities we are conducting research to understand precisely how to radically transform the way in which cities are engineered to move towards future cities that address current challenges and promote long-term well-being for society and the planet. After reviewing evidence of urban transformations, we identified that, in most cases, their starting point was a high level vision, usually defined by political leadership based on strong participatory processes, which constructed imaginaries that defined the main urban functions to be provided by the city and that underpinned all projects and policies in the short and long term. Because of the importance of setting such a vision our research aims to define a way of developing a vision of a future ideal city. Our approach identifies a methodology for defining the future city vision that is able to move beyond the all-too-common 'political wish list' and that enabled the vision to be defined as a result of a rigorous process. To develop this process we divided the work into two phases. The first phase included empirical work in Latin America, the UK and China and literature review of exemplary urban transformations. As a result, an initial preferable future vision, conceptualized as the 5-cities model was defined. The second phase included a series of 8 sectoral visioning workshops conducted over a period of 2 years in London and other UK cities. Each workshop is analysed to identify the high level principles for the preferable future city. This research findings underscore that transformative planning only can take place when social norms, people's behaviors and people's attitudes change. Urban life is created by everyone in cities, the municipality, citizens, owners, businesses, experts, individuals, communities; therefore, urban life can only be transformed

Locomotion and eye behaviour under controlled environment in individuals with Alzheimer's disease

2015 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2015

This study aimed to examine simple locomotion and eye behaviour of individuals with Posterior Cor... more This study aimed to examine simple locomotion and eye behaviour of individuals with Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA) and typical Alzheimer&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s disease (tAD) within a simulated real-world environment. Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a neurodegenerative condition characterised by parietal, occipital and occipito-temporal tissue loss and progressive impairment of higher-order visual function in contrast to relatively spared memory and language. Targeted types of locomotion were walking in a series of corridors, up or down stairs, and across an open room with or without the presence of an obstacle. Eye tracking measures and inertial moment units (IMU) were used in this experiment, and resultant acceleration of left foot and fixation duration were extracted. Findings from three participants are presented as a case series: one control, one PCA and one tAD patient. The averaged resultant acceleration of PCA patient was the slowest in all types of locomotion, especially in stairs. The averaged resultant accelerations of PCA and tAD participants were slower than the control participant. The PCA participant had longer mean fixation durations than the tAD and control participants, however, mean fixation duration was similar between tAD and control participants. Results may help characterise locomotion and eye behaviour in PCA and tAD and may suggest ways to support effective diagnosis and assessment of disease progression.

Effect of vertical step height on boarding and alighting time of train passengers

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part F: Journal of Rail and Rapid Transit, 2015

New train stock or train services are continually being added to the network in the UK. Their des... more New train stock or train services are continually being added to the network in the UK. Their design, in conjunction with European Regulations on train floor and rail height, means there is often a gap between train and platform necessitating at least one physical step. This paper presents the results from a series of experiments testing the time required to board or alight a train across three different gap heights. The experiments were designed to test for the effect of age and luggage type on the time to board or alight. As expected, more steps result in a longer time required to board or alight. More interesting is the effect of age and luggage on time to board and alight with younger people being relatively unaffected by the presence of steps and luggage, whereas both these factors hinder elderly people. The quantification of these effects has implications for accessibility of train services and for train dwell times and can be used by others in the design and planning stages o...

The effect of mobility aid on the total heart beat index of paralympics athletes when traversing complex terrains

Introduction In the US over half a million people are prescribed crutches each year. More than 75... more Introduction In the US over half a million people are prescribed crutches each year. More than 750,000 wheelchair users exist in the UK and wheelchair and crutch users commonly develop shoulder pathology. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of complex topographies on heart rate (HR) and thus energy expenditure, using a wheelchair and differing crutch designs on the exertional body stress. Method Two Paralympics Athletes from the GB amputee football squad were assessed in a Lomax Active wheelchair and 5 different types of crutches in a randomly allocated order over a course representing everyday complex terrains at the Pedestrian Accessibility and Movement Environment Laboratory (PAMELA), University College London. In addition results were compared over the same course with the athletes using their own personal pair of crutches. The PAMELA course consisted of a mixture of 4% and 2.5% cross falls (transverse) and a simulated road crossing, sprint, slalom and a slow straight. Results Initial findings show both athletes needed to work harder, thus spend more energy (13% more) to cope with the wheelchair tasks (2.6) than with the crutches(2.3). The Total Heart Beat Index (THBI) revealed that trying to ambulate with the crutches was more difficult in 4% cross fall (3.3) than on the longitudinal slopes (3.2), followed by 2.5% cross fall (2.85), slalom (2.1) and sprint (1.8). For the same tasks executed using a wheelchair the 2.5% gradient was shown to be the higher energy demanding (3.8), followed by the 4% (3.5), slopes (2.9), slalom (2.2) and sprint (2.1). Both participants reached a lower THBI (2.2) during the same task when using their own crutches. Conclusion The results of this study imply that ambulation with crutches puts less burden than wheelchair. This might be due to the time these athletes spend with crutches, either in training or activities of daily living. Furthermore, the physical strain which they underwent during the complex terrains was clearly reflected on their heart rate. The setting of longer distances to collect more consistent HR data should be the focus of further research. The comparison in performance between athletes and the general population should also be investigated.

Journal of Advanced Transportation, 2016

Accurately predicting train dwell time is critical to running an effective and efficient service.... more Accurately predicting train dwell time is critical to running an effective and efficient service. With high-density passenger services large numbers of passengers must be able to board and alight the train quicklyand within scheduled dwell times. Using a specially constructed train mock-up in a pedestrian movement laboratory the experiments outlined in this paper examine the impact of train carriage design factors such as door width, seat type, platform edge doors and horizontal gap on the time taken by passengers to board and alight. The findings illustrate that the effectiveness of design features depends on whether there are a majority of passengers boarding or alighting. An optimum door width should be between 1.7m and 1.8m. The use of a central pole and platform edge doors produced no major effects, but a 200mm horizontal gap could increase the movement of passengers. There is no clear effect of the type of seats and neither the standbacks between 50 mm, 300 mm and 500mm. Further research will look for the relationship between the dwell time and the characteristics of passengers such as personal space.

Infrastructure is the means by which society is supported. How it interacts with people is of cru... more Infrastructure is the means by which society is supported. How it interacts with people is of crucial importance to its successand thus that of society as a whole. This paper is directed to anyone who is either involved with infrastructure-whether as a policy-maker, designer, implementer or operator-or affected by infrastructure, whether as a user, affected otherwise. Too often infrastructure is seen in isolation of everything outside the particular item being considered. Infrastructure within society is considered in a piecemeal and distorted way. It is important to redefine the meaning of infrastructure so it can be perceived in a more mature and beneficial way and society can progress and create a better quality of life for all. Key Messages from the White Paper 1. Every new piece of infrastructure has to be planned and designed in accordance with the needs and priorities of the people affected. "People affected" includes but is not limited to those affected by:  how regard to heritage is being included in the project,  how the process of planning, construction, or the provision of service includes their concerns,  how the infrastructure continues to adapt to changing needs in the long-term, and  how investment priorities (which might imply cutting investment in other areas) include their concerns. 2. To increase public participation and allow citizen identification with individual infrastructure projects, data has to made available to the general public as meaningful information. Data on its own, like evidence on its own, is insufficient. The information and communication provided to the general public needs to be understood by people outside the proposed project at all levels. This needs a sea-change in communications strategies, efforts and capabilities within the infrastructure sector. 3. Effective public engagement is not enough. People need to participate in the whole decision making process from concept to implementation and evaluation. The infrastructure industry needs to change radically so that both they and the public change the perception of the role of planners, designers, constructors and operators from just being technical experts to acting as process facilitators. We have to accept that people might want something not anticipated or not ideal from the scientific point of view. Technical professions need to understand that they are there to facilitate the full development of society-not only growth but also societal, cultural and health development-by working with society, not imposing People and Infrastructure Based Services-An Opportunity for Engagement Advance copy-pending publication in 'ICIF White Paper Collection', UCL Press [TBC Winter 2016] 2 upon it.