SCHOOLZONE

Team Name

Happy

Team Members

Project Description

Schools are a foundational pillar for ensuring the continual expansion of our future generations. There are currently more than a 1000 public schools being offered by the Victorian State government to its citizens. To ensure accessibility for all children to schools, the Victorian State Government has implemented a Zonation Policy, where each child is designated the nearest public school.

Within metropolitan regions of the state, this designation is generally determined by a straight-line measurement from the house to the closest public school.

This designation approach doesn't consider the public transport network, which encourages greater use of cars by parents, leading to higher congestion, greater travel times, emissions and unsafe roads particularly for children around school areas.

So our project, School Zone's objectives are to enhance road safety, particularly around school areas, decrease emissions and travel times by encouraging the use of trams, buses and trains for trips undertaken to schools.

In particular, schoolzone helps the government redesign school zones by focusing on assigning students based on accessibility to schools via a single mode of public transport, while also considering the shortest route and capacity of schools.

Data Story

The following key datasets have been utilised in the design and development of schoolzone:

• the Victorian Transport Data for establishing the locations and routes of the trams, buses and trains.

• the Victorian Dept. of Education & Training data for identifying the school locations

• & Census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics for identifying the demographic profiles and locations of the Statistical Area 1s.

School utilises robust network optimisation models along with specialist spatial mapping software to identify appropriate school designations for households.

Greater use of public transportation for trips to & from schools will reduce the number of cars on roads, leading to enhanced levels of safety, especially for our children around school areas, lower emissions and reduction in travel times.

School Zone offers a sustainable approach to establishing desgination schools for our children.