University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Addressing the uncertain geographic context problem by advanced spatial analysis approaches based on GIS and GPS for environmental health studies

Wang, Jue

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WANG-DISSERTATION-2019.pdf

WANG-DISSERTATION-2019.pdf

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/104979

Description

Title
Addressing the uncertain geographic context problem by advanced spatial analysis approaches based on GIS and GPS for environmental health studies
Author(s)
Wang, Jue
Issue Date
2019-04-01
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Kwan, Mei-Po
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Kwan, Mei-Po
Committee Member(s)
  • McLafferty, Sara
  • Wang, Shaowen
  • Cidell, Julie
Department of Study
Geography & Geographic InfoSci
Discipline
Geography
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Date of Ingest
2019-08-23T20:35:43Z
Keyword(s)
  • Environmental health
  • the uncertain geographic context problem
  • activity space
  • environmental context cube
  • exposure assessment
  • food environment
  • physical activity
  • GPS
  • GIS
Abstract
Scholars in the fields of health geography, urban planning, and transportation studies have long attempted to understand the relationships among human movement, environmental context, and their effect on health outcomes. Considerable research has been conducted to advance our understanding of how environmental exposures affects health behaviors and outcomes. In many of these studies, however, environmental exposures are found to have inconsistent associations with health. The uncertain geographic context problem (UGCoP) is one of the most important methodological issues that contribute to the inconsistent findings. This dissertation explores the methodological issues in environmental health research causing the uncertain findings and how the UGCoP influences research findings, proposes an activity space approaches to comprehensively assess the individual exposures to environmental contexts, and designs an innovative environmental exposure evaluation framework to spatiotemporally assess individual environmental exposure and evaluated the environmental effects on health outcomes. With empirical analysis of real-world applications with the GPS tracking data and environmental context data collected at Chicago, IL, and Columbus, OH, these proposed approaches are proved perform better than currently widely used methods. Taking into account the complex spatial and temporal dynamics of individual environmental exposures, the proposed methods also helps to mitigate the UGCoP in important ways. They may be used in environmental health studies concerning environmental influences on a wide range of health behaviors and outcomes, and thus help to improve our understanding of the environmental effects on different health behaviors and outcomes.
Graduation Semester
2019-05
Type of Resource
text
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/104979
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2019 Jue Wang

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Graduate Dissertations and Theses at Illinois PRIMARY
Graduate Theses and Dissertations at Illinois
Dissertations and Theses - Geography and Geographic Information Science