An Interactive Mapping Tool to Assess Individual Mobility Patterns in Neighborhood Studies

Abstract

As their most critical limitation, neighborhood and health studies published to date have not taken into account nonresidential activity places where individuals travel in their daily lives. However, identifying low-mobility populations residing in low-resource environments, assessing cumulative environmental exposures over multiple activity places, and identifying specific activity locations for targeting interventions are important for health promotion. Daily mobility has not been given due consideration in part because of a lack of tools to collect locational information on activity spaces. Thus, the first aim of the current article is to describe VERITAS (Visualization and Evaluation of Route Itineraries, Travel Destinations, and Activity Spaces), an interactive web mapping application that can geolocate individuals' activity places, routes between locations, and relevant areas such as experienced or perceived neighborhoods. The second aim is to formalize the theoretic grounds of a contextual expology as a subdiscipline to better assess the spatiotemporal configuration of environmental exposures. Based on activity place data, various indicators of individual patterns of movement in space (spatial behavior) are described. Successive steps are outlined for elaborating variables of multiplace environmental exposure (collection of raw locational information, selection/exclusion of locational data, defining an exposure area for measurement, and calculation). Travel and activity place network areas are discussed as a relevant construct for environmental exposure assessment. Finally, a note of caution is provided that these measures require careful handling to avoid increasing the magnitude of confounding (selective daily mobility bias).

Using GPS, GIS, and Accelerometer Data to Predict Transportation Modes

“…The algorithm automatically uploaded the history of visits to places into the electronic survey application. As previously described (9), this information and the travel diary were then used for the prompted recall survey conducted during a phone call (10). This procedure resulted in the observation of 7425 trips for 236 participants.…”

“…As previously described in detail, the RE-CORD participants were recruited during preventive health checkups in 2007-2008 and 2011-2013, born between 1928 and 1978, and resided at baseline in 112 municipalities of the I ˘ l e-de-France Paris region (5,7,13,34). In the second wave of the study (8,26), after undergoing a medical checkup and filling computerized questionnaires at the IPC Medical Centre (10,23), 410 individuals were invited to participate in the RECORD GPS study (9), of which 247 subjects agreed to participate. Nine participants abandoned the study, and data collection failed for two participants, thereby yielding a final participation and completion rate of 57.6% (n = 236).…”

Changing the environment to improve population health: a framework for considering exposure in natural experimental studies

“…; and What degree of change is required to bring about health benefits? [9][10][11][12] As Diez Roux suggests, where complexity is an issue, 'simplification can be obfuscating rather than illuminating'. 13 14 Additional questions are required to illuminate what, how and why changes to social or environmental factors influence health.…”

Using address histories in health research

“…Extending one suggested example [21] of an efficient data collection method, development of user-friendly interactive map tools, could greatly benefit health GIS researchers. A map tool used in a face-to-face survey environment could help a participant remember or infer the location of a previous address through the use of simple buffers; a participant could use the knowledge that his or her old house was close to a certain set of businesses or public amenities to narrow down and then locate his or her old house.…”