Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2018, 15(9), 2022; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15092022
An Analytical Framework for Integrating the Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Environmental Context and Individual Mobility in Exposure Assessment: A Study on the Relationship between Food Environment Exposures and Body Weight
Jue Wang *
and Mei-Po Kwan
and Mei-Po Kwan
Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science, Natural History Building, 1301 W Green Street University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 31 August 2018 / Revised: 11 September 2018 / Accepted: 13 September 2018 / Published: 15 September 2018
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Human Mobility, Spatiotemporal Context, and Environmental Health: Recent Advances in Approaches and Methods)
Abstract
In past studies, individual environmental exposures were largely measured in a static manner. In this study, we develop and implement an analytical framework that dynamically represents environmental context (the environmental context cube) and effectively integrates individual daily movement (individual space-time tunnel) for accurately deriving individual environmental exposures (the environmental context exposure index). The framework is applied to examine the relationship between food environment exposures and the overweight status of 46 participants using data collected with global positioning systems (GPS) in Columbus, Ohio, and binary logistic regression models. The results indicate that the proposed framework generates more reliable measurements of individual food environment exposures when compared to other widely used methods. Taking into account the complex spatial and temporal dynamics of individual environmental exposures, the proposed framework also helps to mitigate the uncertain geographic context problem (UGCoP). It can be used in other environmental health studies concerning environmental influences on a wide range of health behaviors and outcomes. View Full-TextKeywords:
environmental health; food environment; environmental context cube; environmental context exposure index; the uncertain geographic context problem (UGCoP); GPS; GIS
▼
Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).
Share & Cite This Article
MDPI and ACS Style
Wang, J.; Kwan, M.-P. An Analytical Framework for Integrating the Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Environmental Context and Individual Mobility in Exposure Assessment: A Study on the Relationship between Food Environment Exposures and Body Weight. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2018, 15, 2022.
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
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