Poster Session I
Project Type
Poster
Project Funding and Affiliations
EPSCoR, University of Montana
Faculty Mentor’s Full Name
Lucy L. W. Owen
Faculty Mentor’s Department
Computer Science
Additional Mentor
Katrina Mullan, katrina.mullan@umt.edu
Abstract / Artist's Statement
Air pollution, especially from wildfire smoke, has become an increasing threat to human health as drier, hotter conditions drive more frequent and larger wildfires across the United States. To reduce personal health risks, guidelines suggest staying indoors and limiting physical exertion during days with poor air quality. However, limiting physical exertion can also cause negative health outcomes, especially as the number of poor air quality days continues to increase. Quantifying when action is and isn’t taken to limit exposure is an important prerequisite for interventions designed to mitigate the negative health consequences of air pollution from wildfires, and the economic costs of these actions can inform fire management decisions. Building on prior work focused on the Northwestern United States, we estimate the extent to which the use of parks and indoor and outdoor fitness areas change with air quality across the contiguous United States. We expand the project scope by identifying sites used only for physical activity such as sports pitches and by including polygons for indoor fitness and sports centers, all obtained from ParkServe and Open Street Maps. We estimate changes in daily unique visitors to these locations over a period of four years using cellphone location data from Azira, examining heterogeneity in changes to visits using location characteristics and visitor demographics.
Category
Social Sciences
Impacts of air pollution on park and fitness area visitation across the contiguous United States.
UC South Ballroom
Air pollution, especially from wildfire smoke, has become an increasing threat to human health as drier, hotter conditions drive more frequent and larger wildfires across the United States. To reduce personal health risks, guidelines suggest staying indoors and limiting physical exertion during days with poor air quality. However, limiting physical exertion can also cause negative health outcomes, especially as the number of poor air quality days continues to increase. Quantifying when action is and isn’t taken to limit exposure is an important prerequisite for interventions designed to mitigate the negative health consequences of air pollution from wildfires, and the economic costs of these actions can inform fire management decisions. Building on prior work focused on the Northwestern United States, we estimate the extent to which the use of parks and indoor and outdoor fitness areas change with air quality across the contiguous United States. We expand the project scope by identifying sites used only for physical activity such as sports pitches and by including polygons for indoor fitness and sports centers, all obtained from ParkServe and Open Street Maps. We estimate changes in daily unique visitors to these locations over a period of four years using cellphone location data from Azira, examining heterogeneity in changes to visits using location characteristics and visitor demographics.