Article on the VERITAS geolocation software in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine

In the second wave of the RECORD Study, we rely on the VERITAS interactive web mapping software to survey the participants of the study.

Developed in collaboration between Inserm and University of Montreal, this software allows one to geocode the multiple activity places of participants and to draw the boundaries of their residential neighborhood as they perceive it.

On the one hand, the published article describes in details the different tools available in the VERITAS software. On the other hand, in an attempt to contribute to a “contextual expology” (as a subdiscipline interested in the places and times of environmental exposures), it examines the indicators that can be constructed based on the data collected.

A first series of indicators is related to the spatial behavior of participants, i.e., to their individual patterns of mobility in space and time. A second series of indicators aims to assess the environmental exposures that people face in their daily mobility (in their different activity places).

To address the concerns of a literature mainly focused on residential environments, the objective of the work is to take into account daily mobility in the study of the effects of the environment on health.