Wearable Sensing and Mining of the Informativeness of Older Adults’ Physiological, Behavioral, and Cognitive Responses to Detect Demanding Environmental Conditions

Abstract

Due to the decline in functional capability, older adults are more likely to encounter excessively demanding environmental conditions (that result in stress and/or mobility limitation) than the average person. Current efforts to detect such environmental conditions are inefficient and are not person-centered. This study presents a more efficient and person-centered approach that involves using wearable sensors to collect continuous bodily responses (i.e., electroencephalography, photoplethysmography, electrodermal activity, and gait) and location data from older adults to detect demanding environmental conditions. Computationally, this study developed a Random Forest algorithm—considering the informativeness of the bodily response—and a hot spot analysis-based approach to identify environmental locations with high demand. The approach was tested on data collected from 10 older adults during an outdoor environmental walk. The findings demonstrate that the proposed approach can detect demanding environmental conditions that are likely to result in stress and/or limited mobility for older adults.

Design Element Preferences in Public Facilities: An Eye Tracking Study

“…On the one hand, regarding demographic characteristics, the subjects were a group of university students aged 18-35 who were more sensitive to color perception. Factors such as cultural background [56], education level [57], and age [58] may affect people's visual preference evaluation, and subsequent studies can be conducted for different subject populations. On the other hand, this paper mainly focused on the color and material of logos, and the change of color and material may differ in a large spatial area.…”

Detecting stressful older adults-environment interactions to improve neighbourhood mobility: A multimodal physiological sensing, machine learning, and risk hotspot analysis-based approach

“…Although this is a promising approach to detecting defects in sidewalks, it may be ineffective when the gait data is collected from older adults due to the prevalence of gait disorder among people aged over 60 years [54]. Older adults exhibit diverse abnormal gait responses, which makes it unreliable when computing the common gait among multiple older pedestrians to detect environmental defects [55].…”

“…However, because current EEG sensors require good contact with the scalp, their effectiveness can be impacted in an ambulatory, real-world setting. For example, recent studies reported stability issues and temporary dysfunction of an EEG headset while monitoring pedestrians' brain activation in an ambulatory outdoor environment [55,58]. To accurately and reliably monitor older adults' stress due to environmental conditions, it is essential to use sensors that are stable in the wild.…”

What Do Local People Really Need from a Place? Defining Local Place Qualities with Assessment of Users’ Perceptions

“…Studies from morphological and typological angles specifically examine how physical forms affect people's urban experiences, adapt users' behavioural needs, and support interactions [10,21,28,30,[32][33][34][35]. On the other hand, environmental psychologists believe people's bodily responses in urban spaces are physiological, behavioural, and cognitive reactions to the physical environment caused by positive stimulations of cognitions, emotions, and psychology [36][37][38][39][40][41]; locally inappropriate or unsupportive urban space may cause negative feelings and interactions with the physical setting that reduce the use of space, leading to mental stress, and even resulting in psychological problems or effects [37,39,42,43].…”