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ELEVATE: Healthy living environments create healthy physical activity-related habits

ELEVATE: Healthy living environments create healthy physical activity-related habits: Harnessing street-view images, artificial intelligence, and smartphone sensors to decode physical activity behaviour

Research line: Tailored Lifestyle: an integrated data-driven approach to lifestyle and living environment // Preserving Health
Funding Scheme: Health~Holland (Top Sector LSH) PPP Call 2025 – Tailored Lifestyle programme

ELEVATE explores how our everyday built and natural environment influence how physically active we are. By combining street images, smartphone data, and local voices, the project uses artificial intelligence to reveal what makes neighbourhoods more active and helps cities design healthier, fairer places for everyone to move and live.

Many people want to be more physically active but find it difficult in their daily lives. ELEVATE is a collaboration between universities, companies, and public partners that aims to make cities healthier places by supporting active living. The project examines how streets and neighbourhoods can better encourage physical activity, using artificial intelligence, smartphone-based mobility data, and input from residents.

Physical inactivity is a growing public health concern. In the Netherlands, less than half of adults meet the national guideline of 150 minutes of physical activity per week. People of lower socioeconomic status are often less physically active and have poorer health. Creating physical and natural environments that support physical activity—such as safe, green, and pleasant streets—can make a difference. Yet, there is still limited knowledge about which specific environmental characteristics encourage physical activity and how to design cities that benefit everyone. ELEVATE helps to fill this gap.

ELEVATE collects data in Amsterdam, where participants use their smartphones to record where and how much they move during daily life. Street-view images and artificial intelligence are used to measure how streets look. In co-created workshops, residents and stakeholders share their experiences and ideas. These insights are combined to develop a digital tool that suggests ways to redesign streets and neighbourhoods to promote physical activity.

Objectives and Route to Impact

Objectives:

  • Longitudinally assess relationships between streetscape features and physical activity using smartphone sensing and AI-based street-view analyses.
  • Identify where adults are most/least physically active and how environment–activity links differ between groups, including by socioeconomic status.
  • Co-create streetscape design principles that support active lifestyles.
  • Develop an AI-powered (re)design tool that suggests targeted environmental interventions to promote physical activity.

Route to impact:

ELEVATE aims to provide municipalities, urban planners, and health professionals with practical, transparent, and scalable tools to support healthier, more inclusive living environments. By combining AI-driven evidence with citizen input and focusing on equity, the project supports urban (re)design strategies that encourage physical activity and help reduce health disparities.

Methods and Deliverables

Methods:

  • Co-creation with residents and stakeholders (including walk-along interviews and workshops) to capture lived experiences and practical needs.
  • AI analysis of large-scale street-view imagery (alongside spatial data) to quantify streetscape features and perceived qualities.
  • Smartphone-based sensing in Amsterdam (GPS and motion sensors) plus surveys to link daily mobility and physical activity to environmental exposures.
  • Spatiotemporal modelling to understand how environmental exposures relate to physical activity over time and across groups.
  • Development and validation of an explainable AI (re)design tool with a user-facing interface that supports decision-making.

Key deliverables:

  • Practical design recommendations and a digital tool that cities and citizens can use to plan healthier environments.
  • A harmonised environmental dataset and reproducible analysis approach.
  • A reusable smartphone-based measurement approach and linked datasets to support further research and application.
  • Actionable insights for policy and practice, supported by scientific outputs.

Contribution to Collaboration

ELEVATE is a transdisciplinary public–private partnership that brings together academic research, municipal and public health practice, and private-sector expertise in spatial design and digital tools. Co-creation is embedded throughout the project, ensuring two-way learning and alignment with community needs and real-world planning practice. Together, partners develop evidence, methods, and an AI-supported tool that is intended to be practical, scalable, and transferable beyond the pilot context.

Team

Contact

Marco Helbich — Utrecht University

m.helbich@uu.nl

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