An open-source tool to identify active travel from hip-worn accelerometer, GPS and GIS data

Background: Increases in physical activity through active travel have the potential to have large beneficial effects on populations, through both better health outcomes and reduced motorized traffic. However accurately identifying travel mode in large datasets is problematic. Here we provide an open source tool to quantify time spent stationary and in four travel modes(walking, cycling, train, motorised vehicle) from accelerometer measured physical activity data, combined with GPS and GIS data. Methods: The Examining Neighbourhood Activities in Built Living Environments in London study evaluates the effect of the built environment on health behaviours, including physical activity. Participants wore accelerometers and GPS receivers on the hip for seven days. We time-matched accelerometer and GPS, and then extracted data from the commutes of 326 adult participants, using stated commute times and modes, which were manually checked to confirm stated travel mode. This yielded examples of five travel modes: walking, cycling, motorised vehicle, train and stationary. We used this example data to train a gradient boosted tree, a form of supervised machine learning algorithm, on each data point (131537 points), rather than on journeys. Accuracy during training was assessed using five-fold cross-validation. We also manually identified the travel behaviour of both 21 participants from ENABLE London (402749 points), and 10 participants from a separate study (STAMP-2, 210936 points), who were not included in the training data. We compared our predictions against this manual identification to further test accuracy and test generalisability. Results: Applying the algorithm, we correctly identified travel mode 97.3% of the time in cross-validation (mean sensitivity 96.3%, mean active travel sensitivity 94.6%). We showed 96.0% agreement between manual identification and prediction of 21 individuals’ travel modes (mean sensitivity 92.3%, mean active travel sensitivity 84.9%) and 96.5% agreement between the STAMP-2 study and predictions (mean sensitivity 85.5%, mean active travel sensitivity 78.9%). Conclusion: We present a generalizable tool that identifies time spent stationary and time spent walking with very high precision, time spent in trains or vehicles with good precision, and time spent cycling with moderate precisionIn studies where both accelerometer and GPS data are available this tool complements analyses of physical activity, showing whether differences in PA may be explained by differences in travel mode. All code necessary to replicate, fit and predict to other datasets is provided to facilitate use by other researchers.

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PID https://www.doi.org/10.1186/s12966-018-0724-y
PID pmid:30241483
URL https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/2891467512
URL https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/files/176428506/document.pdf
URL http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/168631/
URL http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85053660690&partnerID=8YFLogxK
URL http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC6150970
URL http://openaccess.sgul.ac.uk/110187/1/document.pdf
URL https://pubag.nal.usda.gov/catalog/6142680
URL https://doi.org/10.1186/s12966-018-0724-y
URL http://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/view/rmit:54199
URL https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s12966-018-0724-y
URL http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12966-018-0724-y/fulltext.html
URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6150970/
URL http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/168631/1/168631.pdf
URL https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/6b771305-0cf7-4b82-8553-14d3556e6c72
URL http://hdl.handle.net/1983/6b771305-0cf7-4b82-8553-14d3556e6c72
URL https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12966-018-0724-y
URL http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s12966-018-0724-y.pdf
URL https://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12966-018-0724-y
URL https://doaj.org/toc/1479-5868
URL https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/an-open-source-tool-to-identify-active-travel-from-hip-worn-accel
URL http://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/4649454/
URL http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12966-018-0724-y
URL https://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/id/eprint/4649454/1/s12966-018-0724-y.pdf
URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12966-018-0724-y
URL http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/74286
URL https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/files/176428506/document.pdf
URL https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12966-018-0724-y
URL http://openaccess.sgul.ac.uk/110187/
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Author Alicja Rudnicka, 0000-0003-0369-8574
Author Anne Ellaway, 0000-0002-2117-4451
Author Christopher Owen, 0000-0003-1135-5977
Author Ashley Cooper, 0000-0001-8644-3870
Author Bina Ram, 0000-0003-0023-1573
Author Daniel Lewis, 0000-0002-2111-4256
Author Billie Giles-Corti, 0000-0003-0102-0225
Author Duncan Procter, 0000-0003-1874-1205
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Collected From Europe PubMed Central; Explore Bristol Research; ORCID; UnpayWall; Datacite; DOAJ-Articles; Crossref; Spiral - Imperial College Digital Repository; Microsoft Academic Graph; CORE (RIOXX-UK Aggregator)
Hosted By Explore Bristol Research; Enlighten; Spiral - Imperial College Digital Repository; St George's Online Research Archive; International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity; LSHTM Research Online
Publication Date 2018-09-21
Publisher BioMed Central
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Country United Kingdom
Format application/pdf
Language English
Resource Type Other literature type; Article; UNKNOWN
keyword Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
keyword keywords.Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation
system:type publication
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Source https://science-innovation-policy.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=dedup_wf_001::d53a67cf6e71b3bb8053432941ea1199
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Last Updated 22 December 2020, 16:01 (CET)
Created 22 December 2020, 16:01 (CET)