SCC-IRG Track 2: Digital Twin City for Age-friendly Communities - Crowd-biosensing of Environmental Distress for Older Adults

老年人患多种慢性病的风险很高，而且面临着高昂的医疗成本支出。散步等体力活动被认为是减少健康风险和负担的最有效的预防策略。强有力的证据表明，步行等环境因素与老年人的步行和整体体力活动密切相关，虚弱的老年人更容易受到环境障碍/挑战的影响。然而，以“普通人”为目标的传统城市规划/设计做法已不能满足与年龄有关的生理和心理社会状况的老年人的特殊需要。因此，大多数社区的邻里环境可能会给老年人带来严重的身体和情感痛苦，从而限制他们的行动能力和户外体育活动。因此，该项目的目标是(1)创建一个数字孪生城市(DTC)模型，揭示老年人的集体痛苦和相关的环境状况，以及(2)利用DTC模型开发和实施技术和环境干预措施，以缓解这种痛苦，促进老年人的独立行动和体力活动。DTC模型将通过匹配或配对众包生物信号(即来自老年人佩戴的非显眼可穿戴设备的生理传感数据)与来自参与式传感和谷歌街景的街头视觉数据来构建，从而能够建立城市的情感地图。因此，该项目将利用DTC模式，与当地利益相关者和德克萨斯州休斯敦一个服务不足社区的老年人合作，设计、实施和/或评估应激干预措施。我们工作的经验成果将每天量化社区成员的经验，这将促进在个人和社区层面进行富有成效的对话和有针对性的干预。虽然这项研究利用德克萨斯州休斯敦作为试验床，但研究结果有望推广到美国其他社区，这项工作的成果(例如，DTC模型)将向公众广泛提供。该项目将在以下方面取得方法学上的进步：(1)根据可靠的生理测量构建特定于群体的显著模型，(2)使用多模式数据开发个性化求救预测，以及(3)制定求救响应路由算法。研究团队与社区合作伙伴将把这些成果纳入设计、实施和评估三种技术/环境压力反应干预措施：(1)提供社区情感地图，以提高老年人对社区环境应激源的认识；(2)提供压力反应路线计划，优化老年人对个人健康和行动条件的路线计划；以及(3)实施环境干预措施(即，促进老年友好型私人拥有的公共空间)，以减轻基于位置的痛苦。此外，该项目中包含的社区参与活动将极大地增强老年人对社区环境中的安全风险和流动性挑战的了解，并将有助于社区在促进健康和减少痛苦方面的能力建设。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Older adults bear a high risk of multiple chronic diseases and face high healthcare cost expenditures. Physical activity such as walking is considered the most effective preventive strategy to reduce health risks and burdens. Strong evidence shows that built environmental factors such as walkability are strongly linked with older adults’ walking and overall physical activity, with frail older adults being more susceptible to environmental barriers/challenges. However, traditional urban planning/design practices that target the “average person” have failed to meet the special needs of older adults experiencing age-related physiological and psychosocial conditions. As a result, neighborhood environments in most communities can be the source of significant physical and emotional distress to older adults, thereby inhibiting their mobility and outdoor physical activity. This project thus aims to (1) create a digital twin city (DTC) model that reveals older adults’ collective distress and associated environmental conditions, and (2) leverage the DTC model to develop and implement technological and environmental interventions that alleviate such distress and promote older adults’ independent mobility and physical activity. The DTC model will be constructed by matching or twinning crowdsourced biosignals (i.e., physiological sensing data from unobtrusive wearable devices worn by older adults) with street-level visual data from participatory sensing and Google Street View, enabling the establishment of a city’s affective map. Thus, this project will leverage the DTC model to design, implement, and/or evaluate stress-responsive interventions, in collaboration with local stakeholders and older adults in an underserved neighborhood in Houston, TX. The empirical outcomes of our work will quantify the experience of community members on a daily basis, which will promote productive conversations and targeted interventions at both the individual and the community levels. While this research leverages Houston, TX as a testbed, research findings are expected to generalize to other communities in the U.S. and artifacts from this work (e.g., DTC model) will be made widely available to the general public.This project will make methodological advancements in (1) constructing group-specific saliency models from reliable physiological measures, (2) developing personalized distress prediction using multimodal data, and (3) formulating distress-responsive routing algorithms. The research team with community partners will incorporate these outcomes into designing, implementing, and evaluation three technology/environmental stress-responsive interventions: (1) providing community affective maps to enhance older adults’ awareness of environmental stressors in their communities; (2) offering stress-responsive routing plans that optimize older adults’ route plans responding to individuals’ health and mobility conditions; and (3) implementing environmental interventions (i.e., promoting age-friendly Privately Owned Public Space (POPS) redesigning/retrofitting neighborhood infrastructure/facilities) to alleviate location-based distress. Additionally, the community engagement activities contained within this project will critically enhance older adults’ understanding of safety risks and of mobility challenges in the community environment and will contribute to the community’s capacity building in promoting health and reducing distress.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.