Physical Environment to Human Health in the Era of Big Data
A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Global Health".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2021) | Viewed by 916
Special Issue Editors
Interests: transportation and health; built environment; intelligent transportation systems; smart cities; connected and automated vehicles; big data science
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
There is now expanding evidence on the role of city design, transportation investments, and the built environment in enhancing public health. This evidence has led to an increase in place-based interventions designed to alter travel and activity patterns in a way that promotes healthy behaviors and reduces undesirable exposures. An understanding of the downstream impacts of the physical environment on healthcare costs is essential to justify the major transport investments to either plan or retrofit communities. On one hand, the physical aspects of the environment, to which everyone is exposed, can encourage or discourage individuals to behave in ways that affect health. Under this behavioral pathway, the built environment offers a protective and prescriptive role in reducing expensive chronic disease-related morbidity and mortality (such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, type II diabetes, and obesity) by altering individuals’ behaviors (e.g., physical activity and social interactions). The COVID-19 health pandemic has also sparked a discussion around the influence of built environment on transmission of communicable infectious diseases.
On the other hand, built environment and transportation decisions also influence health through exposure externalities related to traffic safety, crime, harmful substances (air pollution), and stressors (noise). Strategies derived from well-intended infrastructure interventions along the behavioral pathway can have adverse impacts arising from the exposure-related pathway, and vice versa. As one example, it is well established that density enables physical activity. However, scarce evidence exists about which patterns of density exhibit safer geometric design features that enhance vulnerable road user safety as well.
This Special Issue aims to provide a multidisciplinary and comprehensive overview of the state of the art around how environmental design (at the scale of neighborhoods, open spaces, or cities) affects population health through behavioral and/or exposure pathways. For the purpose of this Special Issue, the focus is on microscopic as well as macroscopic aspects of the physical environment. From a measurement standpoint, studies harnessing the rapid advancements in ambient sensing, computation, big data, and geospatial technologies to characterize the environment, health behaviors, and/or health outcomes are welcomed. We are particularly interested in the following topics:
- Direct, longitudinal and cross-sectional evidence linking built environment and health;
- Natural experiments evaluating the effectiveness of transportation investments on health outcomes;
- Evaluation of smart pedestrian infrastructure and countermeasures in enabling safer active travel;
- Objective assessment of environment and healthy behaviors: Innovative methods in sensing individual behaviors, health outcomes, and the environment;
- Theoretic and empirical frameworks of modeling behavioral and exposure pathways;
- Greenspace and health;
- Evidence to policy and practice: Implementation of evidence-based research findings in practice-based tools for engineers, planners, and public health officials.
We welcome studies from different disciplines such as transportation, urban design and planning, sport science, kinesiology, epidemiology, geography, and landscape architecture.
Dr. Behram Wali
Dr. Keunhyun Park
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- behavioral and exposure impacts
- physical environment
- transportation infrastructure
- smart cities
- land use and walkability
- physical activity
- social interaction
- air pollution
- traffic safety and crime
- chronic disease
- healthcare costs
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