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

2012; Elsevier BV; Volume: 43; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.amepre.2012.06.026

1873-2607

Basile Chaix, Yan Kestens, Camille Perchoux, Noëlla Karusisi, Juan Merlo, Karim Labadi,

Data-Driven Disease Surveillance

As their most critical limitation, neighborhood and health studies published to date almost systematically ignored non-residential activity places where individuals travel in their daily lives.Nonetheless, identifying low mobility populations trapped in low-resource environments, assessing environmental exposures cumulated over multiple activity places, and identifying the right activity places for targeting each intervention are important needs for health promotion.Given the lack of tools to collect locational information on activity spaces, the first aim of the article is to describe VERITAS (Visualization and Evaluation of Route Itineraries, Travel destinations, and Activity Spaces) as an interactive web mapping application allowing researchers to geolocate individuals' activity places, routes between locations, and relevant areas such as experienced or perceived neighborhoods.The second aim is to formalize the theoretical grounds of a contextual expology as a subdiscipline aimed at a better assessment of the spatiotemporal configuration of environmental exposures.Based on activity place data, various indicators of individual spatial behavior (patterns of movement in space) are described, as a key dimension in neighborhood and health research.Preliminary guidance is provided on the successive steps for elaborating variables of multi-place environmental exposure (collection of raw locational information, selection/exclusion of locational data, derivation of an exposure area for measurement, and calculation)."Travel and activity place network areas" are discussed as a relevant construct for environmental exposure assessment.Finally, it is warned that measures of multi-place environmental exposure that improve the stratification of individuals according to true exposures may at the same time increase the magnitude of confounding (selective daily mobility bias processes), if not carefully handled.