A Neighbourhood Outing Guide Community Welfare Centres Could Buy

The ingredients to bring scattered outing information together

In September 2026, the Seoul Metropolitan Government (서울특별시), the city government of Seoul, newly released one dataset on intersections and crosswalks, one on Seoul-style garden prescriptions, and three on air pollution. Together, these five datasets provide the basic ingredients for putting safe routes, nearby green activities, and current air conditions on one screen.

The intersection and crosswalk dataset includes district, intersection name, crosswalk type, whether pedestrian signals are installed, and location coordinates. It is a 1.69 MB Excel file shown as current as of 24 August 2026. Rather than following a fixed schedule, it is updated when facility information changes.

The Seoul-style garden prescription dataset contains 2025 operating locations, participant groups, number of sessions, participant counts, and operating organisations. Seoul said that in the first half of 2025, it ran 1,374 sessions at 134 locations with 22,805 participants and a 96.9% satisfaction rate. It also said that there were 256 operating organisations as of June that year.

The air data is split into readings by time and place, monitoring-station locations, and descriptions of measurement items. The readings are corrected one-hour averages published at five minutes past every hour. That makes them useful for deciding whether to go out that day, but they are not final confirmed values. For research or official evidence, they must be checked again against AirKorea data.

The terms of use differ. Air-pollutant measurement information and monitoring-station information can be used in commercial services when the source is credited. The terms for measurement-item information need to be checked. Commercial use of garden-prescription operating results is prohibited, so a paid service needs separate permission to include them. The crosswalk file can be downloaded directly. A service that automatically retrieves air readings needs an authentication key from the Seoul Open Data Plaza (서울 열린데이터광장), Seoul’s public-data portal.

A new budget holder appears: local programme staff

Consider a social worker at a senior welfare centre in Seongbuk District who runs a weekly walking class. You can assume that, before leaving, they open an air-quality screen, inspect the route on a map, call participants, then enter attendance and cancellation reasons into another document after the class.

When the air is poor, they must separately decide which time to move the session to, whether the chosen route has pedestrian signals, and whether it can connect to a nearby green activity. Once participants’ walking speed or use of mobility aids is considered, a route that looks short on a map still needs checking on site to establish whether it is actually suitable.

In a new tool, staff enter the departure location, time, and participant characteristics. They can then see the latest reading from a nearby monitoring station, crossing points with pedestrian signals, and risk sections verified directly by their organisation on one screen. They choose between going out, changing the time, or moving indoors.

The potential scope has widened for a tool that local institutions such as welfare centres, schools, and childcare centres could buy—organisations that already spend budgets on walking, health, or gardening programmes. For initial sales, you can assume programme staff are the users and the organisation head is the approver, but each institution’s actual approval process needs to be verified.

The case for purchase is better tied to operating records than to broad health claims. The published garden-prescription results focus on location, participant group, session count, participant count, and satisfaction. You can first show whether preparation time fell, how many planned activities took place, and whether every reason for a change was recorded.

Some work must clearly remain with people. Staff need to check crosswalk kerbs and construction directly, assess participants’ health conditions and walking ability, and make the final decision. The service should not make medical judgments or guarantee safety. Its role should be limited to reducing scattered checks and record-keeping.

The limits of the data should also be visible in the interface. The crosswalk file has no accident counts, vehicle volumes, or signal-cycle data. A monitoring-station reading may differ from actual exposure in an individual alley. And 2025 garden-prescription results are not a current recruitment schedule. Rather than promising complete route guidance from the start, it is more realistic to narrow the scope to a pre-outing checklist and operating record.

In some UK air-quality services, institutions pay

Breathe London in the United Kingdom provides both monitoring equipment and a public map so that schools, hospitals, boroughs, and community groups can directly monitor local air. It started at 136 locations in 2021 and grew to more than 600 within two years. Residents can view the data free of charge, while installing organisations pay about KRW 4.75 million plus tax per monitoring device, converted from the data’s stated price.

The payer here is not a resident viewing an air-quality number. It is an organisation such as a school or hospital that is responsible for users’ outdoor activities. In areas with limited budgets, up to 60 devices were provided free of charge, separating free public information from institution-facing installation and management services.

London’s Clean Air Route Finder showed people walking or cycling less-polluted routes for free. It presented 15 routes with pollutant concentrations 30% to 60% lower than main roads. The cost for another organisation to put the route feature on its own website started at about KRW 2.8 million, converted from the data’s stated price.

The service began in 2016 and ended in July 2024. Creating useful routes and sustaining long-term operation are different things. In Seoul, first identify the institution that will continue paying for data updates and on-site verification.

Nature prescriptions in Scotland began as a way for doctors and nurses to direct patients to nearby nature activities. At five medical practices in Edinburgh, 50 health professionals made more than 335 referrals from September 2020 to June 2021, and 74% of respondents said it was helpful.

The first product in this case was not a complex health-management system. It was a booklet listing activities and a referral process. While 91% of participating health professionals said they intended to use it again the following year, this was a small survey and cannot establish a treatment effect.

Four things to build right now

1. Today’s outing board for welfare centres

• What: Show the latest air conditions from a nearby monitoring station, organisation-verified walking routes, and the presence of pedestrian signals together. Record the outing decision and reason for any change.
• Who: A social worker at a senior welfare centre who runs walking classes for older adults and currently checks maps and air-quality screens separately each time.
• Why now: Hourly air readings can be used in commercial services, and crosswalk-location data is also public.
• First screen: Show three classes scheduled for today, buttons for “go ahead,” “change time,” and “move indoors,” and the measurement time used for the decision.

2. A field-survey tool for stroller walking routes

• What: Use crosswalk data to select sites to inspect first, then record kerbs, slopes, construction, and pavement width on site with photos.
• Who: Childcare-centre teachers who need to choose walking routes for young children, and district-contracted teams studying travel conditions for stroller users.
• Why now: Crosswalk locations and the presence of pedestrian signals across Seoul are available in one file, making it easier to order field surveys.
• First screen: Show a map that colour-codes crossings without pedestrian signals and a list labelled “not yet checked on site.”

3. An air alert before outdoor classes begin

• What: Before class starts, send the current value and recent changes from the nearest monitoring station, then let staff record whether the class will proceed.
• Who: Leaders of after-school classes, youth sports classes, and community sports programmes for people with disabilities that frequently use outdoor grounds.
• Why now: Readings are provided hourly and monitoring-station information is updated once a day, reducing manual checks.
• First screen: Show the next class location, nearest monitoring station, measurement time, current condition, and a button for the staff member’s final decision.

4. A garden-activity operating log

• What: Use an organisation’s existing schedule and participant list to manage attendance, activity details, the next contact date, and satisfaction questions.
• Who: Welfare centres and local health institutions that run garden activities but manage participation records and follow-up contact separately in documents.
• Why now: Published results and manuals reveal real operating fields and institution customer groups, but a paid service needs separate permission from Seoul to use the source data.
• First screen: Show expected participants for today’s activity, people who have not responded, materials to prepare, and four records to complete after the activity.

One place to ask today

Call one nearby senior welfare centre and ask how many screens and documents it checks on the day before and the day of a walking programme. If staff move between two or more screens, record the same information again, and agree to try a one-screen pilot tool in next month’s programme, it is worth testing.

Why this matters where you are

Seoul’s case depends on Korean conditions: its city-run public datasets, their specific licensing terms, and institutions that already organise local outdoor programmes. In your market, check whether route, air-quality, and local-activity information can legally be combined, who pays for programme operations, and which decisions staff must still make on site. Start with a record-keeping and pre-outing check tool before attempting full route guidance.