A POI-Based Machine Learning Method in Predicting Health: Predicting Residents' Health Status and Implications for Healthy City Planning

This research aims to explore the quantitative relationship between urban planning decisions and the health status of residents. By modeling the Point of Interest (POI) data and the geographic distribution of health-related outcomes, the research explores the critical factors in urban planning that could influence the health status of residents. It also informs decision-making regarding a healthier built environment and opens up possibilities for other data-driven methods. The data source constitutes two data sets, the POI data from OpenStreetMap, and the CDC dataset PLACES: Local Data for Better Health. After the data is collected and joined spatially, a machine learning method is used to select the most critical urban features in predicting the health outcomes of residents. Several machine learning models are trained and compared. With the chosen model, the prediction is evaluated on the test dataset and mapped geographically. The relations between factors are explored and interpreted. Finally, to understand the implications for urban design, the impact of modified POI data on the prediction of residents' health status is calculated and compared. This research proves the possibility of predicting residents' health from urban conditions with machine learning methods. The result verifies existing healthy urban design theories from a different perspective. This approach shows vast potential that data could in future assist decision-making to achieve a healthier built environment. © Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture Annual Conference, ACADIA 2021.