RESUMEN TESIS: Tomás Zamora

This thesis follows the papers compliation model attending to Departamento de Proyectos de Ingeniería de la Universidad Politécnica de Valencia inside PHD program: Proyectos de Ingeniería e Innovación. The text describes the work complied by 3 papers publicated in Safety Sciency (1) and in International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics (2) about the topic: safety and comfort while walking over public outdoor surfaces. Main contributions are related to pavement improvement acording to the pedestrian phisical and perceptive interaction.  

Main objective of the research is the generation of new safety and comfort criteria to design and select outdoor public pavements. The work focuses fundamentally in one of the most dangerous problems while walking which is falls, by using innovative biomechanics and perception methodologies. The relation between pedestrian and context together with a deeper insight in people needs (mainly movility disable profiles) and risky situations conforms the holistic approach to solve the objetives. In addition, it is explored criteria beyond the minimum friction level to include high friction influences in the walking pattern and which mechanisms are governing the safety and comfort subjective perception of vulnerable pedestrians.

The methodologies used to aswer the hipothesis cover: clasical human walking biomechanics, lineal and nonlineal variability analysis, dynamic friction device developments, and emotion and subjetive advanced technics (kansei). 

Results advance next conclusions:  
* Friction properties are able to affect the walking pattern especially in comfort and safety.
* Walking patterns associated to mobility disable profiles relate to different requirements to those fixed in national and international standars.
* Mobility disable profiles require higher friction than people without mobility problems. Low member amputees require the highest friction level attending to their pattern.   
* Subjective perception in elderly when exploring pavements is substancially different from Youngers and at the same time it is significativelly selective both affecting on thier prediposition to adopt or not a safer walking pattern.
* Comfort and safety perception induced by pavements can be controlled thought system design elements. 
* Clearly, there is a higher friction treshoold from which a current walking pattern modiffies its parameters.  
* Considering the existenace of a lower and higher treshold, it could be said that there exists an optimum friction range for walking safe and comfortable. 
* Inside the proposed optimum friction level, the walking patterns registres higer variability, higer entropy and present higer complexity than outside the range. 

Proposed advances influence directly on industrial sectors such as natural stones, woods, syntetic materials, ceramic tiles and thier value chain considering suppliers and prescriptors (public and private). Finally, results incorporate new criteria to advance in the inclusion of everybody needs giving sense to the paradigm of a modern, safe and comfortable city for all.