BACKGROUND Studies involving the built environment have typically relied on US Census data to measure residential density. However, census geographic units are often unsuited to health-related research, especially in rural areas where development is clustered and discontinuous. OBJECTIVE We evaluated the accuracy of both standard census methods and alternative GIS-based methods to measure rur...

This paper offers an econometric model system that simultaneously considers six different activity-travel choice dimensions in a unifying framework. The six dimensions include residential location choice, work location choice, auto ownership, commuting distance, commute mode, and number of stops on commute tours. The paper presents the modeling methodology in detail as well as estimation result...

Hong Kong is of subtropical climate where summer is hot and winter is warm. Natural ventilation is most desirable for cooling and providing fresh air in residential buildings in moderate seasons for better indoor air quality and thermal comfort. The natural ventilation performance is affected by a combination of internal and external factors. External factors include the location, the orientati...

BACKGROUND Somali migrants fleeing the civil war in their country face punishing journeys, the loss of homes, possessions, and bereavement. On arrival in the host country they encounter poverty, hostility, and residential instability which may also undermine their mental health. METHODS An in-depth and semi-structured interview was used to gather detailed accommodation histories for a five ye...

PURPOSE In epidemiologic studies, neighborhood characteristics are often assigned to individuals based on a single residence despite the fact that people frequently move and, for most cancer outcomes, the relevant time-window of exposure is not known. The authors evaluated residential mobility patterns for a population-based series of childhood leukemia cases enrolled in the Northern California...

PURPOSE Previous research on the influence of the food environment on weight status has often used impersonal measures of the food environment defined for residential neighborhoods, which ignore whether people actually use the food outlets near their residence. To assess whether supermarkets are relevant contexts for interventions, the present study explored between-residential neighborhood and...

To help address the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, a physically based probabilistic model has been developed to quantify and analyze dermal and nondietary ingestion exposure and dose to pesticides. The Residential Stochastic Human Exposure and Dose Simulation Model for Pesticides (Residential-SHEDS) simulates the exposures and doses of children contacting residues on surfaces in treated r...

The spatio-temporal analysis of residential fires could allow decision makers to plan effective resource allocations in fire management according to fire clustering levels in space and time. In this study, we provide guidelines for the use of various methods in detecting the differences in clustering patterns of fire and non-fire (i.e., background residential) locations and how these patterns c...