City Of Boston Research Articles

Machine Learning Model to Forecast Demand of Boston Bike-Ride Sharing

Bike-ride sharing systems are the new generation of traditional bike rentals, where the entire process is automated. A user rents a bike from one location and returns it at another location. There are more than 500 bike-ride sharing systems around the world, consisting of more than 500,000 bikes. Bike-ride sharing systems are typically found in urban and large cities such as Boston, N.Y. City, Washington DC, Paris, Montreal, and Barcelona. Bike-ride sharing is particularly important due to their important impact on traffic, environment, and health. As popular as bike-ride sharing systems are, there is a lack of a reliable model to forecast (predict) bike rental demand daily. Lack of available bikes constitutes an inconvenience to individuals seeking a bike at a certain location and a loss of revenues for companies operating the bikes. This paper develops a Machine Learning (ML) model (algorithm) to forecast (predict) the number of bikes rented daily based on historical data. Moreover, the model overlays environmental and seasonal settings to study their impact on bike rental demand. We test our ML model using a real-life dataset obtained from a local bike-ride sharing company in the City of Boston in the state of Massachusetts in the United States. We also applied the model to historical dataset from New York City (NYC). In both cases, the model is accurate and reliable.

136 Implementing a Standardized Breast Cancer Patient Navigation Program to Advance Health Equity Across the City of Boston: Challenges and Opportunities

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Translating Research into Practice (TRIP), a hybrid implementation pragmatic clinical trial and CTSA collaboration, aims to implement a standardized breast cancer patient navigation protocol across five sites in Boston, MA. The goal of this study was to assess individual and institutional barriers and facilitators to implementing this protocol. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: From November 2019 to August 2020, researchers conducted ethnographic observations of Patient Navigators (PN) at three of the five participating sites. Each PN at each site was observed for two, four-hour blocks by researchers trained in ethnographic research. Observers took notes using TRIPs 11 Step Protocol as a guide, which includes identifying patients at risk for delays in care, screening and referring patients to resources for health-related social needs, and tracking patients across the care continuum. Fieldnotes were uploaded into Dedoose and coded deductively by four researchers using a comparison and consensus approach. Researchers analyzed the data to identify barriers and facilitators to both implementing each protocol step and maximizing navigations ability to promote health equity. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Across all sites, PNs faced barriers to adhering to the TRIP Protocol due to practical workflow constraints including their level of engagement across the cancer care continuum. Although there are other staff members who engage in navigation activities, navigation is often viewed solely as the responsibility of the PN. Operationalizing navigation as a person rather than a process creates confusion around the role, and PNs are often seen as a catchall position when other staff do not know how to help a patient. The time that PNs spend on tasks unrelated to core navigation activities described in the TRIP Protocol prevents PNs from navigating patients most at risk for delays in care. A lack of continuity across the care continuum can create role confusion for the PNs. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Patient Navigation can promote health equity; however, any task that pulls PNs away from navigating patients most at risk for delays in care diminishes this potential. PNs abilities to enact the TRIP protocol, which they saw as valuable, is circumscribed by the extent to which navigation is operationalized as a process within the institution.

Toward A Collaborative Smart City: A Play-Based Urban Living Laboratory in Boston

ABSTRACT This article reports on an urban living laboratory that designed a suite of play-based prototypes, as an attempt to “institution” collaborative smart city governance in the city of Boston. This project was called “Beta Blocks,” and it geographically defined “Exploration Zones,” governed by local residents and business owners, who decided whether, where, and why to temporarily install technologies in the public realm. To recruit and facilitate the participation of Zone Advisory Group members, the authors fabricated a lavender, parking-space-sized, inflatable art exhibition (Beta Blob) that hosted a suite of public-facing activities. Although the composite model failed at “institutioning” itself into Boston’s government through this prototype, the discrete components succeeded in centering play in public learning situations and prototyping a model for collaborative governance between publics, and the public and private sectors.

Assessment of patient navigation programs for breast cancer patients across the city of Boston.

Healthcare systems contribute to disparities in breast cancer outcomes. Patient navigation is a widely cited system-based approach to improve outcomes among populations at risk for delays in care. Patient navigation programs exist in all major Boston hospitals, yet disparities in outcomes persist. The objective of this study was to conduct a baseline assessment of navigation processes at six Boston hospitals that provide breast cancer care in preparation for an implementation trial of standardized navigation across the city. We conducted a mixed methods study in six hospitals that provide treatment to breast cancer patients in Boston. We administered a web-based survey to clinical champions (n= 7) across six sites to collect information about the structure of navigation programs. We then conducted in-person workflow assessments at each site using a semi-structured interview guide to understand site-specific implementation processes for patient navigation programs. The target population included administrators, supervisors, and patient navigators who provided breast cancer treatment-focused care. All sites offered patient navigation services to their patients undergoing treatment for breast cancer. We identified wide heterogeneity in terms of how programs were funded/resourced, which patients were targeted for navigation, the type of services provided, and the continuity of those services relative to the patient's cancer treatment. The operationalization of patient navigation varies widely across hospitals especially in relation to three core principles in patient navigation: providing patient support across the care continuum, targeting services to those patients most likely to experience delays in care, and systematically screening for and addressing patients' health-related social needs. Gaps in navigation across the care continuum present opportunities for intervention. Clinical Trial Registration Number NCT03514433, 5/2/2018.

80 “Minutes away, worlds apart”: The changing imagination of the Boston Harbor Islands

The Boston Harbor Islands are a historically urban archipelago. Since its founding in 1630, the city of Boston has embedded them firmly in its urban infrastructure. The islands have served as sources of wood and building stone, common pastures, sites of harbor defenses and lighthouses, and as ‘dumping grounds’ for materials, businesses, and institutions undesirable in the city proper. In the middle third of the twentieth century, however, Bostonians imagined their city’s harbor islands in a new way: one that has obscured most of their long human history and has cast them in the role of a natural landscape fundamentally different from the city. This changing perception resulted in the islands recently becoming places reserved almost exclusively for conservation and recreation. This article explores the way in which a certain kind of island narrative that frames islands as isolated, extraordinary places of mystery and adventure came to dominate the imagination of Boston’s previously mundane urban islands.

The role of climate change and decentralization in urban water services: A dynamic energy-water nexus analysis

Urban water services, including drinking water supply and wastewater treatment, are highly energy dependent, contributing to the challenges described under the water-energy nexus. Both future climate change and decentralized water system adoptions can potentially influence the energy use of the urban water services. However, the trend and the extent of such influences have not been well understood. In this study, a modeling framework was developed to quantify both the separate and the combined influences of climate change and decentralization on the life cycle energy use of the urban water cycle, using the City of Boston, MA as a testbed. Two types of household decentralized systems were considered, the greywater recycling (GWR) systems and the rainwater harvesting (RWH) systems. This modeling framework integrates empirical models based on multilinear regression analysis, hydrologic modeling, water balance models, and life cycle assessment to capture the complex interactions among centralized water services, decentralized water system adoptions, and climate parameters for cumulative energy demand (CED) assessment, considering all residential buildings in Boston. It was found that climate change alone will slightly increase the energy use of the centralized systems towards the end of the century, due to the cancelation effect amongst changes in water quality, flow rate, and space and water heating demand. When decentralization is considered alone, we found economically viable decentralized systems may not necessarily produce energy savings. In fact, RWH adoptions may increase energy use. When climate change and decentralization are combined, they will increase the water yield and cost savings of the decentralized systems, while reducing the energy use from the centralized systems. When the centralized systems are further added into the picture, the CED of the entire urban water cycle is projected to increase by 0.9% or 2.3% towards the end of the century under climate change if GWR or RWH systems are adopted by respective cost saving positive buildings.

Urban-Scale Evaluation of Cool Pavement Impacts on the Urban Heat Island Effect and Climate Change.

We implemented a context-sensitive and prospective framework to assess the global warming potential (GWP) impacts of cool pavement strategies on specific roads for different cities. The approach incorporates several interconnections among different elements of the built environment, such as buildings and urban road segments, as well as the transportation fleet, using specific building and pavement information from an urban area. We show that increasing pavement albedo lowers urban air temperatures but can adversely affect the building energy demand in the areas with high incident radiation exposure. The heating energy savings and the radiative forcing effect improve the GWP savings in cold and humid climate conditions. The total GWP savings intensity is sensitive to the city morphology and road traffic. The probabilistic results show that cool pavement strategies can offset 1.0-3.0% and 0.7-6.0% of the total GHG emissions of the U.S. cities Boston and Phoenix, respectively, for a 50-year analysis period. The worldwide range of savings can be as large as 5.0-44.7 Gt of CO2 eq. A paradigm shift in pavement strategy selection is required in most neighborhoods.

Spatially optimized distribution of household rainwater harvesting and greywater recycling systems

Household decentralized water systems, including rainwater harvesting and greywater recycling, are often touted as a means to improve the sustainability and resiliency of centralized municipal systems. This research is focused on the spatial distributions of life cycle energy savings, consumer cost savings, and percent demand met of decentralized, household rainwater harvesting (RWH) and greywater recycling (GWR) system adoptions when they are being optimized for either life cycle cost or energy savings. The city of Boston was used as a testbed for applying the modeling framework in this study. A dynamic model was developed for both RWH and GWR systems to simulate daily water and energy usages and savings over a 30-year time frame using Python. The cost and energy optimal sizes of the RWH and GWR systems for each residential building in Boston were calculated using the Brent's method. Household characteristics such as distance from the centralized plants, number of tenants, and roof size were either directly obtained through Boston GIS data or approximated based upon existing data. Overall, GWR systems were found to perform generally better than RWH systems across the entire Boston. An average life cycle cost saving of $909–948/year and an average life cycle energy saving of 586–622 MJ/year can be achieved via installing cost- or energy-optimized GWR systems. The middle city area is generally good for both RWH and GWR system adoptions from both cost and energy perspectives. Incentives might be provided to foster decentralized system adoptions with infrastructure renovation efforts in this area. On the other hand, the southern sub-urban areas are generally the most suitable for installing RWH systems, while the downtown and its surrounding areas are generally the most suitable for promoting GWR systems. When taking stormwater management into consideration, the downtown area can also benefit from combined RWH and GWR systems as well as shared systems with local parks or other buildings with larger irrigation demands.

Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe

Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe

Examining Proactive and Responsive Outcomes of a Dedicated Co-Responder Team

Abstract The Boston Police Department (BPD) has adopted a Co-Responder approach to enhance their response to people with mental illnesses residing in the City of Boston. Because of resource constraints, the BPD does not have a dedicated car to respond to mental health-related calls. This means that while Co-Responding teams can call off on or be dispatched to calls known or suspected to have a mental health component based on nature code or a commonly visited address, they must also respond to more typical calls for service. Using grant funding, the BPD implemented a 1-month dedicated Co-Responder car pilot programme and collected data about all related encounters. Using these data, we explore the outcomes resulting from this evaluation. First, we discuss the development and implementation of the Co-Response model and dedicated car pilot in Boston. Secondly, we examine how the Co-Responder team spent its time during the dedicated car pilot programme and describe the outcomes of encounters with community members, with a focus on involuntary evaluations and commitments as well as the factors that predicted these particular outcomes. Results indicate that much of the Co-Response work is proactive and that formal dispositions, such as involuntary commitment and evaluation, are used sparingly. Finally, policy and practice implications are discussed.

Go Local: Innovating Local Health Departments' Engagement on Alzheimer’s

The aging Baby Boom generation is a major force behind projected increases in the prevalence of Alzheimer’s, which is expected to grow from 5.8 million (2020) to 13.8 million (2050). Local health departments play a major role connecting people living with dementia (and their caregivers) to services, supports, and education, and to ensure safe, accessible environments where they can flourish. From September 2019-July 2020, two local health departments (from San Diego County and the City of Boston) participated in a yearlong collaborative pilot project with the Alzheimer’s Association to advance cognitive health, dementia, and caregiving issues in their local jurisdictions. The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) provided expert guidance and input throughout the collaboration. As part of the project, the local health departments: scanned their current work on healthy aging, identified existing data sources, and examined how existing healthy equity initiatives can apply to cognitive health, dementia, and caregiving issues. Action plans were developed, with a focus on policy mechanisms to initiate and sustain these projects and workforce development initiatives. Plans corresponded to actions of the Healthy Brain Initiative Road Map, helping elevate recommendations to change systems, policies, and environments. In fall 2020, LHDs will be able to use best practices, case studies, and tools developed from San Diego’s and Boston’s pilots to address Alzheimer’s as a chronic condition. The tools will help them engage health officials, develop action plans, and train the public health

Quantifying the health impacts of eliminating air pollution emissions in the City of Boston

Background. Cities around the world are taking action to limit greenhouse gas emissions through ambitious climate targets and climate action plans. These strategies are likely to simultaneously improve local air quality, leading to public health and monetary co-benefits. We quantify and value the health impacts of eliminating emissions from the City of Boston, and in doing so, highlight the importance of considering health impacts alongside environmental impacts of local climate action.Methods. We simulated at a 4km resolution how the elimination of anthropogenic emissions from the City of Boston would impact air quality within a 120km by 120km study domain. We then estimate how this change in air quality would impact a number of annual health outcomes and the associated monetary savings.Results. We found that eliminating anthropogenic emissions from Boston would result in a decline in PM2.5 concentration across the entire study region ranging from 8.5 ug/m3 in Boston to less than 1 ug/m3 elsewhere in the domain. In addition, we estimate that summer ozone would increase for the Greater Boston Area and areas west, and decrease elsewhere. The monetary impact of the change in air quality on health is estimated to be a $2.4 billion per year savings across the full domain and $1.7 billion within Suffolk County only, about 1.4% of the gross domestic product of the county. These monetary impacts are driven primarily by reduced incidence of mortality. We estimate that 288 deaths would be avoided per year across the study domain, about six deaths avoided, annually, per 100,000 people. Within Suffolk County, we estimate that 47 deaths would be avoided per 100,000 people, around 16% of all-cause premature mortality. We also find a net decrease in cardiovascular and respiratory illness. Across the study domain, these health benefits would be disproportionately conferred upon people of color.

A tree-planting decision support tool for urban heat mitigation.

Heat poses an urgent threat to public health in cities, as the urban heat island (UHI) effect can amplify exposures, contributing to high heat-related mortality and morbidity. Urban trees have the potential to mitigate heat by providing substantial cooling, as well as co-benefits such as reductions in energy consumption. The City of Boston has attempted to expand its urban canopy, yet maintenance costs and high tree mortality have hindered successful canopy expansion. Here, we present an interactive web application called Right Place, Right Tree—Boston that aims to support informed decision-making for planting new trees. To highlight priority regions for canopy expansion, we developed a Boston-specific Heat Vulnerability Index (HVI) and present this alongside maps of summer daytime land surface temperatures. We also provide information about tree pests and diseases, suitability of species for various conditions, land ownership, maintenance tips, and alternatives to tree planting. This web application is designed to support decision-making at multiple spatial scales, to assist city officials as well as residents who are interested in expanding or maintaining Boston’s urban forest.

Surfacing the Submerged State: Operational Transparency Increases Trust in and Engagement with Government

Problem definition: As trust in government reaches historic lows, frustration with government performance approaches record highs. Academic/practical relevance: We propose that in coproductive settings such as government services, people’s trust and engagement levels can be enhanced by designing service interactions to allow them to see the often-hidden work—via increasing operational transparency—being performed in response to their engagement. Methodology and results: Three studies, conducted in the field and laboratory, show that surfacing the submerged state through operational transparency impacts citizens’ attitudes and behavior. Study 1 leveraged proprietary data from a mobile phone application developed by the City of Boston, Massachusetts, through which residents submit service requests; the city’s goal was to increase engagement with the app. Users who received photographs of government addressing their service requests submitted 60% more requests and in 38% more categories over the ensuing 13 months than users who did not receive photographs. These significant increases in engagement persisted for 11 months following users’ initial exposure to operational transparency and were highest for users who had experienced government to be at least moderately responsive to their requests in the past. In study 2, residents of Boston who interacted with a website that visualized both service requests (e.g., potholes and broken street lamps) and efforts by the city’s government to address those requests became 14% more trusting and 12% more supportive of government. Moreover, residents who received additional transparency into the growing backlog of service requests that government was failing to fulfill, revealing government to be less responsive, were no more nor less trusting and supportive of government than residents who received no transparency. Study 3 replicated findings from the first two studies and documented underlying mechanisms: operational transparency increases trust and engagement by two causal pathways—through consumers’ increased perceptions of effort by the government and through increased perceptions that engaging with it is impactful. Responsiveness increases feelings of personal efficacy, which boosts willingness to engage both directly and indirectly through the other causal paths. Managerial implications: Taken together, our results suggest that showing more work performed by government—via operational transparency—encourages people to do more work themselves. These results have implications for the design of a broad array of coproductive services where operations are hidden and consumer trust and engagement are critical.

Quantifying the health impacts of eliminating air pollution emissions in the City of Boston

Cities around the world are taking action to limit greenhouse gas emissions through ambitious climate targets and climate action plans. These strategies are likely to simultaneously improve local air quality, leading to public health and monetary co-benefits. We quantify and monetarily value the health impacts of eliminating emissions from the City of Boston, and in doing so, highlight the importance of considering health impacts alongside environmental impacts of local climate action. We simulated at a 4 km resolution how the elimination of anthropogenic emissions from the City of Boston would impact air quality within a 120 km by 120 km study domain. We then estimated how this change in air quality would impact a number of annual health outcomes, as well as the associated monetary savings. We found that eliminating anthropogenic emissions from Boston would result in a decline in PM2.5 concentration across the entire study region ranging from 8.5 µg m−3 in Boston to less than 1 µg m−3 elsewhere in the domain. In addition, we estimate that summer ozone would increase for the Greater Boston Area and areas west, and decrease elsewhere. The monetary impact of the change in air quality on health is estimated to be a $2.4 billion per year savings across the full domain and $1.7 billion within Suffolk County only, about 1.4% of the gross domestic product of the county. These monetary impacts are driven primarily by reduced incidence of mortality. We estimate that 288 deaths would be avoided per year across the study domain from eliminating Boston anthropogenic emissions, about six deaths avoided, annually, per 100 000 people. Within Suffolk County, we estimate that 47 deaths would be avoided per 100 000 people, around 16% of all-cause premature mortality. We also found a net decrease in cardiovascular and respiratory illness. Across the study domain, these health benefits would be disproportionately conferred upon people of color.

The downstream consequences of long waits: How lines at the precinct depress future turnout

Researchers have increasingly paid attention to the impact that the administrative component of elections has on voter behavior. Existing research has focused almost exclusively on the effect that legal changes--such as voter identification laws--have on turnout. This paper extends our understanding of the electoral process by exploring how one aspect of the precinct experience--standing in line to vote--can shape the turnout behavior of voters in subsequent elections. I demonstrate that for every additional hour a voter waits in line to vote, their probability of voting in the subsequent election drops by 1 percentage point. To arrive at these estimates, I analyze vote history files using a combination of exact matching and placebo tests to test the identification assumptions. I then leverage an unusual institutional arrangement in the City of Boston and longitudinal data from Florida to show that the result also holds at the precinct level. The findings in this paper have important policy implications for administrative changes that may impact line length, such as voter identification requirements and precinct consolidation. They also suggest that racial asymmetries in precinct wait times contribute to the gap in turnout rates between white and non-white voters.

Julia Gordon Arrowood (1900 – 1984): A Brilliant Anesthesiologist and a Woman of Many Firsts in Medicine

After a brief “golden age” in the late 1800s, the patriarchal establishment fought back and women faced increasing restrictions in practicing medicine. In 1900, 18.2% of all physicians in the city of Boston were women, but this number decreased to 8.7% by 1930. The relatively young field of anesthesiology was one of the more welcoming specialties for women during this time. History has been unkind to these early female trailblazers who have often been overlooked in favor of the men in their fields. Julia Gordon Arrowood (1900–1984) was a forerunner for women in medicine and a prominent anesthesiologist in Boston from the 1930s until the 1950s. Her work included not only clinical medicine, but also research and teaching. She attended Boston University School of Medicine, graduating as valedictorian in the class of 1933. She interned at Belmont Hospital in Worcester, MA where she decided on a career in anesthesiology. She was accepted as a resident at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) by chief-anesthetist Henry Beecher in 1935, thereby becoming the first woman anesthesiology resident in Massachusetts. She remained at MGH and was named Acting Chief of Anesthesia in 1943. In 1944, she became president of the New England Society of Anesthesiologists, another first for a woman. In 1946, she joined Reginald Smithwick's team as Chief of Anesthesia at Massachusetts Memorial Hospital, Boston, and concurrently held the position of Professor of Anesthesiology at Boston University School of Medicine. Arrowood led many of the earliest studies on spinal anesthesia, muscle relaxants, and spinal headaches. In 1957, she moved to Kentucky and joined the United Mine Workers hospital system where she worked until her retirement in 1970. Women such as Julia Arrowood remain underrepresented in the annals of the history of medicine. Much work is needed to recognize the many contributions made by women physicians and to provide equal opportunities, pay, and status.

Upzoning and value capture: How U.S. local governments use land use regulation power to create and capture value from real estate developments

The public sector can harness its authority to control land uses to secure valuable public benefits from real estate developments. This paper investigates how five major U.S. cities—Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle—are using their land use regulation powers to create and capture value for the public benefit. An analysis of the zoning and entitlement processes of the 20 largest real estate development projects in each city reveals that value has been captured from all 100 projects. Furthermore, these cities implicitly differentiated value capture into two distinct components: value creation and value capture. Among the 100 projects, cities created value for 90 projects by allowing greater density and height—a practice often referred to as “upzoning.” Distinguishing such upzoning incidences from traditional land use exaction tools is important because the added value gives local governments greater legitimacy in asking for public benefits. The experience of the five cities further revealed that value capture strategies can be customized to adapt to unique regulatory, political, and cultural contexts. Lastly, despite the fact that the majority of the upzoned projects increased density and height through project-specific negotiations, none of the cities had clear standards or evaluation frameworks for determining: how much value was created, what can be asked for in return, and who should benefit from the value captured. Cross-national scholarship on value capture can be leveraged to address these important questions.

Current and future biomass carbon uptake in Boston's urban forest

Ecosystem services provided by urban forests are increasingly included in municipal-level responses to climate change. However, the ecosystem functions that generate these services, such as biomass carbon (C) uptake, can differ substantially from nearby rural forest. In particular, the scaled effect of canopy spatial configuration on tree growth in cities is uncertain, as is the scope for medium-term policy intervention. This study integrates high spatial resolution data on tree canopy and biomass in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, with local measurements of tree growth rates to estimate the magnitude and distribution of annual biomass C uptake. We further project C uptake, biomass, and canopy cover change to 2040 under alternative policy scenarios affecting the planting and preservation of urban trees. Our analysis shows that 85% of tree canopy area was within 10 m of an edge, indicating essentially open growing conditions. Using growth models accounting for canopy edge effects and growth context, Boston's current biomass C uptake may be approximately double (median 10.9 GgC yr−1, 0.5 MgC ha−1 yr−1) the estimates based on rural forest growth, much of it occurring in high-density residential areas. Total annual C uptake to long-term biomass storage was equivalent to <1% of estimated annual fossil CO2 emissions for the city. In built-up areas, reducing mortality in larger trees resulted in the highest predicted increase in canopy cover (+25%) and biomass C stocks (236 GgC) by 2040, while planting trees in available road margins resulted in the greatest predicted annual C uptake (7.1 GgC yr−1). This study highlights the importance of accounting for the altered ecosystem structure and function in urban areas in evaluating ecosystem services. Effective municipal climate responses should consider the substantial fraction of total services performed by trees in developed areas, which may produce strong but localized atmospheric C sinks.

EXAMINING ASSOCIATIONS OF THE SOCIOECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS WITH THE NUMBER OF GEO-TAGGED TWEETS IN CENSUS BLOCK LEVEL (CASE STUDY: BOSTON)

Abstract. In this study, the aim is to help uncover some facts about who the Twitter users really are. To this purpose, geotagged twitter data from the city of Boston together with socio-economic data were used. In the first step, tweets in each census block were counted and using the Getis-Ord Gi* index the hotspots and coldspots of tweet locations were extracted. Then, a multiple linear regression was employed, having the number of tweets as the response variable and the population data, age, education, occupation and income as the explanatory variables. Hence, more insight into the relationship between the number of tweets and some socio-economic factors is obtained. Results show that the central parts of Boston are the hotspot and the southern areas are the coldspot locations with regard to tweet numbers. The regression results imply that the number of tweets shared by users in an area is related to the income, the number of people having a university degree and the number of people having each type of job in that spatial unit. The results achieved in this paper could lead to a better vision and understanding in analyzing the tweeter users’ behavior in any area of research and application.