The pervasive adoption of virtual audits has revolutionised the assessment of urban design attributes by eliminating the necessity for on-site visits. However, specialised virtual audit tools for evaluating urban parks that facilitate physical activity in high-density urban environments are still lacking. This study aims to (1) adapt the Audit Tool for Activity-friendly Parks in Dense Urban Areas (TAPS) into a remote audit tool (R-TAPS), and (2) evaluate the reliability and validity of R-TAPS. The development of R-TAPS involved pilot testing the original audit items using Google Earth Pro. Trained auditors used R-TAPS to conduct remote audits of urban parks (n=53) in Tokyo and on-site audits for a subset of cases (n=25). Inter-rater reliability was assessed using kappa and percent agreement. The convergent validity was verified by comparing intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) of individual items and composite scores between remote and on-site audits. Among all R-TAPS items, 89% demonstrated moderate to almost perfect agreement. The ICC between composite scores of remote and on-site audits was 0.73, indicating a high positive correlation. R-TAPS offers a reliable tool for the virtual evaluation of urban parks that promote physical activity in dense urban settings.

Luo, Y., Kaczynski, A. T., Li, J., Motomura, M., Zhao, J., Hanibuchi, T., … & Koohsari, M. J. (2025). Redesigning urban parks for active living in dense urban areas: a remote audit approach. International Journal of Environmental Health Research, 1-11.