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Influence of geocoding quality on environmental exposure assessment of children living near high traffic roads
BACKGROUND: The widespread availability of powerful geocoding tools in commercial GIS software and the interest in spatial analysis at the individual level have made address geocoding a widely employed technique in epidemiological studies. This study determined the effect of the positional error in...
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2007
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1838415/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17367533 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-7-37 |
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author | Zandbergen, Paul A |
author_facet | Zandbergen, Paul A |
author_sort | Zandbergen, Paul A |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The widespread availability of powerful geocoding tools in commercial GIS software and the interest in spatial analysis at the individual level have made address geocoding a widely employed technique in epidemiological studies. This study determined the effect of the positional error in street geocoding on the analysis of traffic-related air pollution on children. METHODS: For a case-study of a large sample of school children in Orange County, Florida (n = 104,865) the positional error of street geocoding was determined through comparison with a parcel database. The effect of this error was evaluated by analyzing the proximity of street and parcel geocoded locations to road segments with high traffic volume and determining the accuracy of the classification using the results of street geocoding. Of the original sample of 163,886 addresses 36% were not used in the final analysis because they could not be reliably geocoded using either street or parcel geocoding. The estimates of positional error can therefore be considered conservative underestimates. RESULTS: Street geocoding was found to have a median error of 41 meters, a 90(th )percentile of 100 meters, a 95(th )percentile of 137 meters and a 99(th )percentile of 273 meters. These positional errors were found to be non-random in nature and introduced substantial bias and error in the estimates of potential exposure to traffic-related air pollution. Street geocoding was found to consistently over-estimate the number of potentially exposed children at small distances up to 250 meters. False positives and negatives were also found to be very common at these small distances. CONCLUSION: Results of the case-study presented here strongly suggest that typical street geocoding is insufficient for fine-scale analysis and more accurate alternatives need to be considered. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-1838415 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2007 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-18384152007-03-28 Influence of geocoding quality on environmental exposure assessment of children living near high traffic roads Zandbergen, Paul A BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: The widespread availability of powerful geocoding tools in commercial GIS software and the interest in spatial analysis at the individual level have made address geocoding a widely employed technique in epidemiological studies. This study determined the effect of the positional error in street geocoding on the analysis of traffic-related air pollution on children. METHODS: For a case-study of a large sample of school children in Orange County, Florida (n = 104,865) the positional error of street geocoding was determined through comparison with a parcel database. The effect of this error was evaluated by analyzing the proximity of street and parcel geocoded locations to road segments with high traffic volume and determining the accuracy of the classification using the results of street geocoding. Of the original sample of 163,886 addresses 36% were not used in the final analysis because they could not be reliably geocoded using either street or parcel geocoding. The estimates of positional error can therefore be considered conservative underestimates. RESULTS: Street geocoding was found to have a median error of 41 meters, a 90(th )percentile of 100 meters, a 95(th )percentile of 137 meters and a 99(th )percentile of 273 meters. These positional errors were found to be non-random in nature and introduced substantial bias and error in the estimates of potential exposure to traffic-related air pollution. Street geocoding was found to consistently over-estimate the number of potentially exposed children at small distances up to 250 meters. False positives and negatives were also found to be very common at these small distances. CONCLUSION: Results of the case-study presented here strongly suggest that typical street geocoding is insufficient for fine-scale analysis and more accurate alternatives need to be considered. BioMed Central 2007-03-16 /pmc/articles/PMC1838415/ /pubmed/17367533 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-7-37 Text en Copyright © 2007 Zandbergen; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Zandbergen, Paul A Influence of geocoding quality on environmental exposure assessment of children living near high traffic roads |
title | Influence of geocoding quality on environmental exposure assessment of children living near high traffic roads |
title_full | Influence of geocoding quality on environmental exposure assessment of children living near high traffic roads |
title_fullStr | Influence of geocoding quality on environmental exposure assessment of children living near high traffic roads |
title_full_unstemmed | Influence of geocoding quality on environmental exposure assessment of children living near high traffic roads |
title_short | Influence of geocoding quality on environmental exposure assessment of children living near high traffic roads |
title_sort | influence of geocoding quality on environmental exposure assessment of children living near high traffic roads |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1838415/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17367533 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-7-37 |
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