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Assessing Google Street View Image Availability in Latin American Cities
Dustin Fry1, Stephen J Mooney2, Daniel A Rodríguez3
1Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health, 3600 Market Street 7th Floor, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA. dtf34@drexel.edu.
Summary
Google Street View audits for urban health research face validity challenges in Latin America. Poorer areas have less available, older, and more varied image ages, impacting study reliability.
Area of Science:
- Urban planning and public health research
- Geospatial analysis and environmental health
Background:
- Virtual audits using Google Street View (GSV) are common in health and urban planning.
- Potential threats to GSV audit validity include image availability, age, and age variance, especially in the Global South.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine GSV image availability, age, and age variance patterns in Latin American cities.
- To assess how these patterns relate to residents' socioeconomic conditions.
Main Methods:
- Assessed GSV image availability at over 530,000 points across 371 Latin American cities.
- Used mixed-effects models to analyze relationships between socioeconomic indicators and image availability, average age, and age standard deviation at the subcity level.
Main Results:
- GSV imagery was available at 45.1% of sampled points, with significant city-to-city variation.
- Higher socioeconomic status areas showed greater image availability, newer average image age, but higher image age variance.
- All three factors (availability, age, variance) were linked to socioeconomic conditions.
Conclusions:
- Threats to the validity of GSV virtual audits in Latin America are associated with socioeconomic factors.
- Researchers must consider these biases when utilizing GSV data in urban health and planning studies.
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