Spatial discontinuities, health and mobility

Abstract

The general objective of this paper is to discuss strong spatial discontinuities in Asian megacities and their potential effects, notably in terms of population health. The factors for exposure to risks vary in the life of individuals, whether it is over a long period of residential migrations or a short one of daily mobility. In the context of dengue epidemics, it is this second modality of urban mobility that interests us as it helps to differentiate exposure to the virus among individuals, beyond those related to their places of residence. This reflection relies on exploration of original datasets designed to better characterize the structures and dynamics in cities where the researcher did not have access to spatialized data until recently. The spread of Internet, smartphones and applications open to geo-localization, has helped to create new opportunities for collecting data. In this paper, we propose to explore POI (Point of Interest) data from Google and the Twitter social network to develop a typology of activities of the city of Bangkok and to measure its tempo/pulsations more appropriately through daily mobilities.