Evaluation of Autonomic Responses to the Urban Environment Through Traditional Methodologies and Autoencoding Networks

Objective measures of autonomic activity such as Heart Rate Variability HRV) and Electrodermal Activity (EDA) can provide useful insights into the emotional responses of citizens to the urban environment that surrounds them. The collection and analysis of such signals during an urban walk protocol showed statistically significant differences in the autonomic responses of experimental subjects throughout various predefined points of a path in an urban environment. The implementation of an Autoencoder neural network allowed for the identification of clusters of subjects exhibiting similar characteristic autonomic activation patterns.