Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2009, 6(6), 1724-1743; doi:10.3390/ijerph6061724
The Built Environment and Health: Introducing Individual Space-Time Behavior
1
Centre for the Built Environment and Health, School of Population Health, The University of Western Australia, M707, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley WA 6009, Australia
2
Institute of Island Culture, Mokpo National University, 61 Dorim-Ri, Cheonggye-Myeon, Muan-Gun, Jeonnam 534-729, Korea
3
Urban Planning Group, Department of Architecture, Building and Planning, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 30 March 2009 / Accepted: 19 May 2009 / Published: 26 May 2009
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability: Environmental Studies and Public Health)
Abstract
Many studies have examined the relationship between the built environment and health. Yet, the question of how and why the environment influences health behavior remains largely unexplored. As health promotion interventions work through the individuals in a targeted population, an explicit understanding of individual behavior is required to formulate and evaluate intervention strategies. Bringing in concepts from various fields, this paper proposes the use of an activity-based modeling approach for understanding and predicting, from the bottom up, how individuals interact with their environment and each other in space and time, and how their behaviors aggregate to population-level health outcomes. View Full-TextKeywords:
built environment; overweight and obesity; individual-based modeling; space-time behavior; activity patterns; health impact assessment
▼
Figures
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0).
Scifeed alert for new publications
Never miss any articles matching your research from any publisher- Get alerts for new papers matching your research
- Find out the new papers from selected authors
- Updated daily for 49'000+ journals and 6000+ publishers
- Define your Scifeed now
Share & Cite This Article
MDPI and ACS Style
Saarloos, D.; Kim, J.-E.; Timmermans, H. The Built Environment and Health: Introducing Individual Space-Time Behavior. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2009, 6, 1724-1743.
Related Articles
Article Metrics
Comments
[Return to top]
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health
EISSN 1660-4601
Published by MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland
RSS
E-Mail Table of Contents Alert