Nick Tyler

• CBE FREng CEng FICE FCIHT FRSA IoU MSc PhD ARCM
• Professor at University College London

Objective: Visual processing deficits arising in dementia are associated with particular functional disability. This study aimed to investigate the effects of the built environment on mobility and navigation in people with dementia-related visual loss. Methods: Participants with posterior cortical atrophy (PCA; “visual-variant Alzheimer’s”; n = 11)...

The last decade has seen substantial advances in the capacity to record behaviour and neural activity in humans in real-world settings, to simulate real-world situations in laboratory settings and to apply sophisticated analyses to large-scale data. Along with these developments, the call for ecological validity (increased use of naturalistic mater...

Introduction Visual 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 c...

The physical environment is of critical importance to child development. Understanding how exposure to physical environmental domains such as greenspace, urbanicity, air pollution or noise affects aggressive behaviours in typical and neurodiverse children is of particular importance given the significant long-term impact of those problems. In this...

The physical environment is of critical importance to child development. Understanding how exposure to domains of the physical environment such as greenspace, urbanicity, air pollution or noise affects externalising problems in typical and neurodiverse children is of particular importance given the significant long-term impact of those problems. In...

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 t...

Posterior Cortical Atrophy is a rare but significant form of dementia which affects peoples’ visual ability before their memory. This is often misdiagnosed as an eyesight rather than brain sight problem. This paper aims to address the frequent, initial misdiagnosis of this disease as a vision problem through the use of an intelligent, cost-effectiv...

The way in which people consider next-generation infrastructure needs to be rooted in the history of the planet and, in particular, its most troublesome inhabitant, Homo sapiens. This history has driven the development of infrastructure through the ages at an accelerating rate, from the incipient early cities of 10 000 years ago to the fast-growing...

This paper discussed if a powered attendant propelled wheelchairs (PAPW) with assist-as-needed control reduces energy consumption and maximise attendant's physical activity in powered system use. This study introduced a PAPW with force velocity assist control (FVAC) based on individual capability of pushing force velocity relationship. This PAPW as...

Buses are a form of active transportation and can improve people's well-being. However, their high level of acceleration can make them less attractive to users. Even worse, they can be responsible for severe injuries that require hospitalisation or for the development of fear of falling, particularly experienced by older people. Evidence has shown...

In April 2020 Transport for London (TfL) commissioned the UCL Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering (CEGE) to explore measures to mitigate the occupational risk posed to London bus drivers from the COVID-19 pandemic, following the tragic deaths of a number of drivers among bus operators within London. A separate study undertak...

Introduction: Clinical reports describe patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) exhibiting atypical adaptive walking responses to the visual environment; however, there is limited empirical investigation of such behaviors or factors modulating their expression. We aim to evaluate effects of lighting-based interventions and clinical presentation (vi...

The aims in this study was to investigate feet movements and eye behaviours of young and older people when stepping over a small single step up to 25 mm height while walking. In addition, this study investigated what factors in feet movements and eye behaviours can be used to show effectiveness of the preventive measures of tripping. Healthy 12 you...

Purpose: To validate a vision-guided mobility assessment for individuals affected by RPE65-associated retinal dystrophy (RPE65-RD). Methods: In this comparative cross-sectional study, 29 subjects, comprising 19 subjects with RPE65-RD and 10 normally-sighted subjects undertook three assessments of mobility: following a straight line, navigating a...

This paper describes the, strategies achievements and challenges of ongoing international research collaboration between CUJAE and University College London. The research team’s ‘responsive’ approach responds to Cuba’s policy framework, as set out in the Lineamientos, Conceptualización, Plan 2030 and sectoral strategies for transport and other sect...

The demand for infrastructure and utility services is an acute challenge for countries in middle- and low-income countries undergoing high levels of urbanization, demographic shifts, and civil and political reorganization. The demand for utilities occurs alongside a trend toward increased financialization of the local state. A challenge for meeting...

The aims in this study was to investigate feet movements and eye behaviours of young and older people when stepping over a small single step up to 25 mm height while walking. In addition, this study investigated what factors in feet movements and eye behaviours can be used to show effectiveness of the preventive measures of tripping. Healthy 12 you...

Organizations that regulate civil engineering have been pressing for integration of 'global responsibility' into higher education curricula since around 2006, with a goal of achieving environmental sustainability and social justice. In an effort led by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE, 2007, 2009), a global vision for civil engineering...

Organizations that regulate civil engineering have been pressing for integration of 'global responsibility' into higher education curricula since around 2006, with a goal of achieving environmental sustainability and social justice. In an effort led by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE, 2007, 2009), a global vision for civil engineering...

People with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have characteristic problems navigating everyday environments. While patients may exhibit abnormal gait parameters, adaptive gait irregularities when navigating environments are little explored or understood. The aim of this study was to assess adaptive locomotor responses of AD subjects in a complex environment...

In a previous work of the authors, the impact of acceleration on people’s walking on the lower deck of a bus was examined. The importance of investigating the impact of bus acceleration when people are walking on the bus staircase is also recognised. As many falls occur on steps or stairs, especially during stair descending, eliminating non-collisi...

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...

What follows here is the Panel’s call for a global urban science. This call takes the three elements of this phrase in a different light from the often popular and at times unnuanced use if the terms. It is ‘global’ in a cosmopolitan sense as pertaining to and reaching out worldwide, irrespective of socio-economic status to the variety of urban con...

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 disciplines – from engineering, urban planning, governance and environmental scien...

In a previous work of the authors, the impact of bus acceleration in level walking was presented. However, climbing stairs is physically more challenging than level walking and results in a high number of falls, hence substantial medical costs. Understanding the impact of a dynamic environment, such as that of a bus, on people’s gait whilst walking...

The numerous falls reported on buses due to sudden accelerations indicate the importance of examining the effect of dynamic environments on people’s gait and balance. Although such falls are more common for the elderly and increase the cost of medical care, they also reduce younger passengers’ satisfaction for the service. This study investigates t...

Air pollution is at the highest levels ever and there is currently a worldwide initiative by transport engineers and urban planners to redesign public transport modes and cities to become more sustainable and environmentally friendly. The environmental impact of everyday activities is more apparent in developing cities which take longer to adapt to...

Recognising that cities provide the context for, and are often the direct beneficiary of, much civil engineering design and construction, it is essential that the future aspirations of city stakeholders are understood, and accommodated where possible. Without this, engineering is likely to prove inefficient at best and potentially ineffective. Deve...

This article is about how we can develop the principles to create an equitable mobility system in a city

Deficits in spatial navigation are characteristic and disabling features of typical Alzheimer's disease (tAD) and posterior cortical atrophy (PCA). Visual cues have been proposed to mitigate such deficits; however, there is currently little empirical evidence for their use. The effect of visual cues on visually guided navigation was assessed within...

Table S1. Proportion of trials completed within the cut‐off time of 60 sec under baseline and cue conditions for tAD, PCA, combined patient group and controls.

This paper analyses more than 200 'car-free' city initiatives, from 95 different cities around the world, aimed at refocusing car-based transport and urban planning towards sustainable transport and as a strategy to create more liveable places. The initiatives were analyzed and classified in terms of their rationale or objective, scale and level of...

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 eva...

Objective Deficits in spatial navigation are characteristic and disabling features of typical Alzheimer's disease (tAD) and posterior cortical atrophy (PCA). Visual cues have been proposed to mitigate such deficits; however, there is currently little empirical evidence for their use. Methods The effect of visual cues on visually guided navigation...

This data article presents the UK City LIFE1 data set for the city of Birmingham, UK. UK City LIFE1 is a new, comprehensive and holistic method for measuring the livable sustainability performance of UK cities. The Birmingham data set comprises 346 indicators structured simultaneously (1) within a four-tier, outcome-based framework in order to aid...

This paper discusses the potential conflicts that can arise when trying to design a transport system to be sustainable , safe and accessible. The paper considers first the overarching vision that drives such an aim and how that determines choices for design and implementation of such schemes. Using the example of a shared space project, Exhibition...

This paper discusses the potential conflicts that can arise when trying to design a transport system to be sustainable, safe and accessible. The paper considers first the overarching vision that drives such an aim and how that determines choices for design and implementation of such schemes. Using the example of a shared space project, Exhibition R...

Background: Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a neurodegenerative condition characterised by progressive corticovisual impairments and pathological involvement of posterior parietal and occipito-temporal regions. While Alzheimer’s Disease is the predominant cause of PCA, unlike typical Alzheimer’s Disease (tAD), episodic memory, executive functio...

In order to achieve sustainable mobility, it is necessary first to determine how to engage and encourage people to act in a sustainable way. This requires a change in the paradigm of planning and design so that we design outwards from the person towards to the city, rather than the other way around.

Background: Of all age groups, older adults spend most of the time sitting and are least physically active. This sequential, mixed-methods feasibility study used a randomised controlled trial design to assess methods for trialling a habit-based intervention to displace older adults' sedentary behaviour with light activity and explore impact on beha...

Recently, much of the literature on sharing in cities has focused on the sharing economy, in which people use online platforms to share underutilized assets in the marketplace. This view of sharing is too narrow for cities, as it neglects the myriad of ways, reasons, and scales in which citizens share in urban environments. Research presented here...

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 quickly – and within scheduled dwell times. Using a specially constructed train mock-up in a pedestrian movement laboratory, the experiments ou...

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...

In cities, infrastructure is usually considered to include energy, transportation, communications, waste and other large-scale systems that support its operation. However, in the design of these systems, we often forget that these infrastructure systems operate is largely dependent on the small-scale interactions between the people and the infrastr...

The relationships between environmental features and older people's ability to safely move around a complex pedestrian environment are, as yet, poorly understood. Specifically, the impact of light levels on trip hazard detection during walking has received relatively little attention. This study investigates the effect of illuminance on people's ab...

BACKGROUND: An understanding of how common features in the built environment influence how people walk is needed to maintain mobility for older people. METHODS: The study included 71 healthy subjects with an age range of 18 to 92 years. Using inertial measurement units, participants’ gaits were assessed while walking across a complex terrain create...

This paper undertakes the assessment of the bus transport systems of two port cities in the Caribbean, the BRT system Transmetro in Barranquilla, and Metrobus, a ‘light’ BRT system, in Panama City. Although the systems have different contexts, design and operational characteristics, they have in common that over the last years their service quality...

The bus is one of the most common artefacts of city life, almost unseen because of its ubiquity in cities all over the world. It is impossible to know exactly how many there are in the world, but most cities of any size have several thousand. Yet, as a system, the bus system is barely understood – by the passengers who use them, the public in gener...

A discussion of the issues surrounding the process of boarding and alighting trains at stations, including examples from empirical studies in the UCL PAMELA facility

The aim of the study was to understand how patients with dementia were able to navigate in a domestic environment, and whether the presence of visual cues could assist in route finding. A simulated domestic environment was created in the Pedestrian Accessibility and Movement Environment Laboratory (PAMELA) comprising three different types of corrid...

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...

This study aimed to examine simple locomotion and eye behaviour of individuals with Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA) and typical Alzheimer'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...

Ensuring equal opportunity to all transport modes, including air travel, allows disabled people the same freedom of travel available to the rest of the population. However, boarding of wheelchair users onto airplanes is physically demanding for attendant airline or airport personal whom assist and time consuming and costly for airlines. This paper...

Pain-related emotions are a major barrier to effective self rehabilitation in chronic pain. Automated coaching systems capable of detecting these emotions are a potential solution. This paper lays the foundation for the development of such systems by making three contributions. First, through literature reviews, an overview of how chronic pain is e...

As recognized by the Social Exclusion Unit poor transport access can contribute to the causes of social exclusion. People who require the use of a powered wheelchair or a mobility scooter in order to be able to carry out their daily activities are most likely to experience transport disadvantage, primarily due to architectural barriers present with...

Walking in the footway environment is an essential activity of daily. The possibility and ability for the individual to reach opportunities and participate in activities on foot indicate the accessibility of the footway environment. One of the major hazards in the footway environment that impedes the accessibility is falling. While it may happen to...

As people grow older, they tend to have reduced body capabilities and balance, therefore fall more frequently. One third of people over 65 fall at least once a year. When moving from a standing position towards a target, the body is put off balance until the lifted foot touches ground again. As numerous falls on buses are reported, assessing whethe...

Biocontainment doors are a key part of high-containment shells and an integral part of a complex system. Designing a facility for these doors, as well as their installation and commissioning, is a challenging task. This article reviews biosafety regulations and standards to decipher when and where biocontainment doors are required within a high-con...

As recognized by the Social Exclusion Unit poor transport access can contribute to the causes of social exclusion. People who require the use of a powered wheelchair or a mobility scooter in order to be able to carry out their daily activities are most likely to experience transport disadvantage, primarily due to architectural barriers present with...

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 r...

Horizontal and vertical gaps between the train and the platform are a major safety concern for railway passengers, especially for disabled passengers. London Underground is implementing a programme to install platform humps to remove vertical differences between the train and the platform. In order to properly design platform humps, this study empi...

This study investigated propelling the attendant-propelled wheelchair on a level surface and up slopes, as well as pulling on the wheelchair while descending slopes, with varying resistive loads caused by the slopes and also by changing the weight of the system. The research questions in this study were: 1) How do attendants naturally adapt their w...

BACKGROUND Mutations in RPE65 cause Leber’s congenital amaurosis, a progressive retinal degenerative disease that severely impairs sight in children. Gene therapy can result in modest improvements in night vision, but knowledge of its efficacy in humans is limited. METHODS We performed a phase 1–2 open-label trial involving 12 participants to evalu...

Background: Mutations in RPE65 cause Leber's congenital amaurosis, a progressive retinal degenerative disease that severely impairs sight in children. Gene therapy can result in modest improvements in night vision, but knowledge of its efficacy in humans is limited. Methods: We performed a phase 1-2 open-label trial involving 12 participants to...

In this paper, three innovative car-sharing systems for urban areas are proposed, based on fleets of individual intelligent vehicles with three service characteristics: instant access, open-ended reservations and one-way trips. These features provide high flexibility but create an uneven distribution of vehicles among stations. Therefore, relocatio...