UPUCS: Spatial evaluation of user-perceived comfort in underground commercial space

Abstract

With underground commercial space (UCS) increasingly becoming an essential area in the daily life of citizens, how to spatially quantify users’ comfort in underground commercial space and enhance the willingness of users to use underground facilities has become an urgent problem that needs to be solved. In order to improve the Perceptual impression of UCS and quantitatively assess users’ Perception level when they are in UCS from a spatial perspective, this paper constructs a User Perception of the Underground Commercial Space (UPUCS) framework. Taking the subway commercial space of Beiyun in Kunming, China, as an example, a questionnaire survey was conducted to understand users’ needs, and the perception of comfort of underground space was quantitatively evaluated from three dimensions: sensory, psychological, and device. The priority of indexes is defined by combining the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the importance-performance analysis (IPA). To put forward specific improvement suggestions for each index, 1 m × 1 m fine sensing grid unit was used for spatial analysis. The findings are as follows: (1) Device perception is the most concerned dimension of Beiyun users. (2) The average score of users’ satisfaction with the indexes in the research area (Performance) was 4.085, and the average index weight (Importance) was 0.083. Most indexes are below-average satisfaction and need to be improved. (3) The spatial analysis results show that 28 key low-performance areas in Beiyun affect users’ willingness to use UCS. (4) The analysis of the perception index combined with spatial quantification can help to put forward targeted suggestions for improvement. Based on the UPUCS spatial analysis results, this paper can provide specific suggestions for UCS improvement and help build the UCS desired by users.