skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


Title: An Analysis of the Spatial Variations in the Relationship Between Built Environment and Severe Crashes
Traffic crashes significantly contribute to global fatalities, particularly in urban areas, highlighting the need to evaluate the relationship between urban environments and traffic safety. This study extends former spatial modeling frameworks by drawing paths between global models, including spatial lag (SLM), and spatial error (SEM), and local models, including geographically weighted regression (GWR), multi-scale geographically weighted regression (MGWR), and multi-scale geographically weighted regression with spatially lagged dependent variable (MGWRL). Utilizing the proposed framework, this study analyzes severe traffic crashes in relation to urban built environments using various spatial regression models within Leon County, Florida. According to the results, SLM outperforms OLS, SEM, and GWR models. Local models with lagged dependent variables outperform both the global and generic versions of the local models in all performance measures, whereas MGWR and MGWRL outperform GWR and GWRL. Local models performed better than global models, showing spatial non-stationarity; so, the relationship between the dependent and independent variables varies over space. The better performance of models with lagged dependent variables signifies that the spatial distribution of severe crashes is correlated. Finally, the better performance of multi-scale local models than classical local models indicates varying influences of independent variables with different bandwidths. According to the MGWRL model, census block groups close to the urban area with higher population, higher education level, and lower car ownership rates have lower crash rates. On the contrary, motor vehicle percentage for commuting is found to have a negative association with severe crash rate, which suggests the locality of the mentioned associations.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2101091
PAR ID:
10614769
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Publisher / Repository:
MDPI
Date Published:
Journal Name:
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information
Volume:
13
Issue:
12
ISSN:
2220-9964
Page Range / eLocation ID:
465
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; (, Journal of Geographical Systems)
    Abstract Multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) extends geographically weighted regression (GWR) by allowing process heterogeneity to be modeled at different spatial scales. While MGWR improves parameter estimates compared to GWR, the relationship between spatial scale and correlations within and among covariates—specifically spatial autocorrelation and collinearity—has not been systematically explored. This study investigates these relationships through controlled simulation experiments. Results indicate that spatial autocorrelation and collinearity affect specific model components rather than the entire model. Their impacts are cumulative but remain minimal unless they become very strong. MGWR effectively mitigates local multicollinearity issues by applying varying bandwidths across parameter surfaces. However, high levels of spatial autocorrelation and collinearity can lead to bandwidth underestimation for global processes, potentially producing false local effects. Additionally, strong collinearity may cause bandwidths to be overestimated for some processes, which helps mitigate collinearity but may obscure local effects. These findings suggest that while MGWR offers greater robustness against multicollinearity compared to GWR, bandwidth estimates should be interpreted with caution, as they can be influenced by strong spatial autocorrelation and collinearity. These results have important implications for empirical applications of MGWR. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, Environmental Science and Pollution Research)
    Abstract Urban neighborhoods with locations of environmental contamination, known as brownfields, impact entire neighborhoods, but corrective environmental remedial action on brownfields is often tracked on an individual property basis, neglecting the larger neighborhood-level impact. This study addresses this impact by examining spatial differences between brownfields with unmitigated environmental concerns (open site) and sites that are considered fully mitigated or closed in urban neighborhoods (closed site) on the US census tract scale in Wayne County, MI. Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy’s leaking underground storage tank (LUST) database provided brownfield information for Wayne County. Local indicators of spatial association (LISA) produced maps of spatial clustering and outliers. A McNemar’s test demonstrated significant discordances in LISA categories between LUST open and closed sites ( p  < 0.001). Geographically weighted regressions (GWR) evaluated the association between open and closed site spatial density (open-closed) with socioeconomic variables (population density, proportion of White or Black residents, proportion of college educated populations, the percentage of owner-occupied units, vacant units, rented units, and median household value). Final multivariate GWR showed that population density, being Black, college education, vacant units, and renter occupied units were significantly associated ( p  < 0.05) with open-closed, and that those associations varied across Wayne County. Increases in Black population was associated with increased open-closed. Increases in vacant units, renter-occupied units, and college education were associated with decreased open-closed. These results provide input for environmental justice research to identify inequalities and discover the distribution of environmental hazards among urban neighborhoods. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; (, Geoscientific Model Development)
    null (Ed.)
    Abstract. Local spatiotemporal nonstationarity occurs in various naturaland socioeconomic processes. Many studies have attempted to introduce timeas a new dimension into a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model,but the actual results are sometimes not satisfying or even worse than theoriginal GWR model. The core issue here is a mechanism for weighting the effectsof both temporal variation and spatial variation. In many geographical andtemporal weighted regression (GTWR) models, the concept of time distance hasbeen inappropriately treated as a time interval. Consequently, the combinedeffect of temporal and spatial variation is often inaccurate in theresulting spatiotemporal kernel function. This limitation restricts theconfiguration and performance of spatiotemporal weights in many existingGTWR models. To address this issue, we propose a new spatiotemporal weightedregression (STWR) model and the calibration method for it. A highlight ofSTWR is a new temporal kernel function, wherein the method for temporalweighting is based on the degree of impact from each observed point to aregression point. The degree of impact, in turn, is based on the rate ofvalue variation of the nearby observed point during the time interval. Theupdated spatiotemporal kernel function is based on a weighted combination ofthe temporal kernel with a commonly used spatial kernel (Gaussian orbi-square) by specifying a linear function of spatial bandwidth versus time.Three simulated datasets of spatiotemporal processes were used to test theperformance of GWR, GTWR, and STWR. Results show that STWR significantlyimproves the quality of fit and accuracy. Similar results were obtained byusing real-world data for precipitation hydrogen isotopes (δ2H) in the northeastern United States. The leave-one-out cross-validation(LOOCV) test demonstrates that, compared with GWR, the total predictionerror of STWR is reduced by using recent observed points. Predictionsurfaces of models in this case study show that STWR is more localized thanGWR. Our research validates the ability of STWR to take full advantage ofall the value variation of past observed points. We hope STWR can bringfresh ideas and new capabilities for analyzing and interpreting localspatiotemporal nonstationarity in many disciplines. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; (, International journal of geographical information science)
    Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) is a widely used tool for exploring spatial heterogeneity of processes over geographic space. GWR computes location-specific parameter estimates, which makes its calibration process computationally intensive. The maximum number of data points that can be handled by current open-source GWR software is approximately 15,000 observations on a standard desktop. In the era of big data, this places a severe limitation on the use of GWR. To overcome this limitation, we propose a highly scalable, open-source FastGWR implementation based on Python and the Message Passing Interface (MPI) that scales to the order of millions of observations. FastGWR optimizes memory usage along with parallelization to boost performance significantly. To illustrate the performance of FastGWR, a hedonic house price model is calibrated on approximately 1.3 million single-family residential properties from a Zillow dataset for the city of Los Angeles, which is the first effort to apply GWR to a dataset of this size. The results show that FastGWR scales linearly as the number of cores within the High-Performance Computing (HPC) environment increases. It also outperforms currently available open-sourced GWR software packages with drastic speed reductions – up to thousands of times faster – on a standard desktop. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; ; (, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health)
    Electric scooters (or e-scooters) are among the most popular micromobility options that have experienced an enormous expansion in urban transportation systems across the world in recent years. Along with the increased usage of e-scooters, the increasing number of e-scooter-related injuries has also become an emerging global public health concern. However, little is known regarding the risk factors for e-scooter-related crashes and injury crashes. This study consisted of a two-phase survey questionnaire administered to a cohort of e-scooter riders (n = 210), which obtained exposure information on riders’ demographics, riding behaviors (including infrastructure selection), helmet use, and other crash-related factors. The risk ratios of riders’ self-reported involvement in an e-scooter-related crash (i.e., any crash versus no crash) and injury crash (i.e., injury crash versus non-injury crash) were estimated across exposure subcategories using the Negative Binomial regression approach. Males and frequent users of e-scooters were associated with an increased risk of e-scooter-related crashes of any type. For the e-scooter-related injury crashes, more frequently riding on bike lanes (i.e., greater than 25% of the time), either protected or unprotected, was identified as a protective factor. E-scooter-related injury crashes were more likely to occur among females, who reported riding on sidewalks and non-paved surfaces more frequently. The study may help inform public policy regarding e-scooter legislation and prioritize efforts to establish suitable road infrastructure for improved e-scooter riding safety. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email