The iConnect research project draws on the diversity of the collaborators' expertise and connections, and the diversity of the Connect2 sites, in offering a wide-ranging but coherent programme of research ranging from measurement, through in-depth studies of effects at a variety of intervention sites, to the economic evaluation of the costs and benefits of this type of intervention. A unique and vital feature of the project is that it brings together an innovative combination of methodological and disciplinary perspectives including those of economics, energy, physical activity, public health, transport and urban studies by forming new research partnerships between investigators from eight institutions with expertise in these fields. The project is intended to capture and assess changes in behaviour and economic impacts attributable to infrastructural interventions in a way which is innovative, accessible to a range of audiences and perspectives, policy-sensitive, and influential in making arguments for future resource allocation.
