An interactive mapping tool to assess individual mobility patterns in neighborhood studies

Area of Science:

• Environmental health
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
• Public health research

Background:

• Existing neighborhood and health studies overlook nonresidential activity spaces crucial for daily life.
• Assessing cumulative environmental exposures across multiple locations is vital for health promotion.
• Lack of tools for collecting locational data on activity spaces limits consideration of daily mobility.

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce VERITAS (Visualization and Evaluation of Route Itineraries, Travel Destinations, and Activity Spaces), an interactive web mapping application.
• Formalize theoretical foundations for contextual expology to assess spatiotemporal environmental exposures.
• Describe indicators of individual spatial behavior and outline steps for multiplace environmental exposure assessment.

Main Methods:

• Development of VERITAS, an interactive web mapping application for geolocating activity places and routes.
• Formalization of contextual expology for spatiotemporal exposure assessment.
• Description of spatial behavior indicators and a multi-step process for calculating multiplace environmental exposure variables.

Main Results:

• VERITAS enables geolocating activity places, routes, and relevant areas (e.g., perceived neighborhoods).
• The study outlines a framework for assessing environmental exposures across multiple activity locations.
• Discussion of travel and activity place network areas as relevant constructs for exposure assessment.

Conclusions:

• VERITAS provides a novel tool to incorporate daily mobility and multiplace exposures into health research.
• Contextual expology offers a theoretical basis for understanding complex environmental exposures.
• Careful handling of mobility data is necessary to avoid confounding biases in health assessments.