An integrated approach to analyze equitable access to food stores under disasters from human mobility patterns

Area of Science:

• Environmental Health
• Urban Planning
• Disaster Management

Background:

• Limited food store access correlates with health risks and reduced community resilience.
• Socially vulnerable groups face persistent disparities in equitable food access.
• The impact of natural disasters on food store access remains under-researched, with traditional methods often failing to capture actual access.

Purpose of the Study:

• To incorporate human mobility patterns into assessing actual food store accessibility.
• To propose and validate a novel accessibility measurement method, the enhanced two-step floating catchment area method with travel preferences (E2SFCA-TP).
• To analyze changes in food store access during a natural disaster (Winter Storm Uri) using mobile phone data.

Main Methods:

• Leveraged large-scale mobile phone data to capture human mobility patterns.
• Developed and applied the enhanced two-step floating catchment area method with travel preferences (E2SFCA-TP).
• Analyzed spatial and temporal access to grocery and convenience stores in Harris County, Texas, during Winter Storm Uri.

Main Results:

• Human mobility patterns provide a more realistic reflection of actual food store access.
• The E2SFCA-TP method demonstrated superior capability in capturing mobility variations compared to the traditional E2SFCA model.
• Winter Storm Uri significantly impacted food store accessibility, with variations influenced by mobility.

Conclusions:

• Integrating human mobility data is crucial for accurately measuring food store accessibility.
• The E2SFCA-TP method offers a valuable tool for assessing access, particularly in disaster scenarios.
• Findings can inform resource allocation to improve food security in underserved areas during and after disasters.