Gridnberg: A Topography-Aware Pedestrian Routing Dataset for New York City

2026-07-24

AI Summary

This study addresses the common omission of elevation differences in urban street network modeling, which compromises the accuracy of pedestrian route choice and accessibility assessments. For the first time, high-resolution terrain data are systematically integrated into a large-scale urban pedestrian network using New York City’s street graph. Elevation observations are assigned at the vertex level and smoothed via a 50-meter radius moving average, preserving 99.24% of original segments (313,184 out of 315,577). Building on this enhanced network, directional cumulative ascent and descent are computed to formulate a multidimensional path cost model incorporating horizontal distance, comfort, and barrier-free slope suitability. The resulting dataset enables high-fidelity, terrain-aware pedestrian routing analysis, substantially improving the realism and reproducibility of urban walkability modeling.

Abstract

Cities are rarely flat, yet urban network analysis usually represents streets as planar graphs. This simplification affects modeled impedance, route choice, and the interpretation of accessibility, particularly where alternative paths differ in grade. This paper introduces Gridnberg ('grid-n-berg', grid and mountain), a topography-aware pedestrian routing dataset for New York City. The dataset enriches the NYCWalks network with vertex-level elevations derived from the New York City Planimetric Database. For each pedestrian-network geometry vertex, the workflow averages selected elevation observations within a 50 m radius, retains segments with complete vertex support, and uses direction-specific cumulative ascent and descent to calculate three routing costs: horizontal distance, a comfort-oriented slope score, and an accessibility-sensitive slope score. The release retains 313184 of 315577 source segments (99.24%). Gridnberg supports reproducible terrain-aware analysis, transparent scenario comparison, and improved pedestrian-network representations in New York and other cities.

Problem

• topography-aware routing
• pedestrian network
• urban slope
• elevation data
• accessibility modeling

Innovation

• topography-aware routing
• pedestrian network
• elevation integration
• slope-aware cost
• urban accessibility