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

老年人患有多种慢性疾病的风险很高，面临着高昂的医疗保健费用支出。步行等体育活动被认为是减少健康风险和负担的最有效预防策略。强有力的证据表明，步行能力等建筑环境因素与老年人的步行和整体身体活动密切相关，体弱的老年人更容易受到环境障碍/挑战的影响。然而，针对"普通人"的传统城市规划/设计做法未能满足老年人的特殊需求，这些老年人面临与年龄有关的生理和心理社会问题。因此，大多数社区的邻里环境可能是老年人严重的身体和情绪困扰的根源，从而抑制了他们的流动性和户外体育活动。因此，该项目旨在（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条件，（2）利用DTC模型制定和实施技术和环境干预措施，缓解这种痛苦，促进老年人的独立行动和身体活动。DTC模型将通过匹配或配对众包生物信号（即，这些数据包括来自老年人佩戴的不显眼的可穿戴设备的生理传感数据）以及来自参与式传感和谷歌街景的街道级视觉数据，从而能够建立城市的情感地图。因此，该项目将利用DTC模型来设计，实施和/或评估压力响应干预措施，与当地利益相关者和德克萨斯州休斯顿服务不足社区的老年人合作。我们工作的实证结果将量化社区成员每天的经验，这将促进个人和社区层面的富有成效的对话和有针对性的干预措施。虽然这项研究利用德克萨斯州的休斯顿作为试验平台，但预计研究结果将推广到美国的其他社区和这项工作的人工制品（例如，DTC模型）将被广泛提供给公众。该项目将在以下方面取得方法上的进步：（1）根据可靠的生理测量构建特定群体的显着性模型，（2）使用多模态数据开发个性化的痛苦预测，以及（3）制定痛苦响应路由算法。研究小组与社区合作伙伴将把这些成果纳入设计、实施和评估三项技术/环境压力应对干预措施：（1）提供社区情感地图，以提高老年人对社区环境压力源的认识;（2）提供压力应对路线计划，优化老年人的路线计划，以应对个人的健康和流动条件;以及（3）实施环境干预（即，促进对老年人友好的私人拥有的公共空间（POPS）重新设计/改造邻里基础设施/设施），以减轻基于位置的痛苦。此外，本发明还该项目中包含的社区参与活动将极大地提高老年人对社区环境中的安全风险和行动挑战的理解，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，并通过利用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查进行评估，被认为值得支持的搜索.

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.