Alcohol in urban streetscapes: a comparison of the use of Google Street View and on-street observation

Abstract

BackgroundAlcohol-related harm is a major global health issue, and controls on alcohol marketing are one intervention utilized by governments. This study investigated the use of Google Street View (GSV) as a novel research method for collecting alcohol-related data in the urban environment.MethodsThe efficacy of GSV and on-street observation by observer teams was compared by surveying 400 m stretches of 12 streets in Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand. Data on alcohol sale, alcohol-related advertising, health promotion materials, regulatory information and visible alcohol consumption were collected.ResultsA total of 403 retailers with evidence of alcohol sales and 1161 items of alcohol-related communication were identified in on-street observation. Of the latter, 1028 items (89 %) were for alcohol marketing and 133 (11 %) were for alcohol-related health promotion and alcohol regulation. GSV was found to be a less sensitive tool than on-street observation with only 50 % of the alcohol venues identified and 52 % of the venue-associated brand marketing identified. A high degree of inter-observer reliability was generally found between pairs of observers e.g., for the detection of alcohol retail venues the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) was 0.93 (95 % CI: 0.78 to 0.98) for on-street observation and 0.85 (95 % CI: 0.49 to 0.96) for using GSV.ConclusionsGSV does not seem suitable for the comprehensive study of the influences on alcohol consumption in the urban streetscape. However, it may still have value for large, static objects in the environment and be more time efficient than traditional on-street observation measures, especially when used to collect data across a wide geographical area. Furthermore, GSV might become a more useful research tool in settings with better image quality (such as more ‘footpath views’) and with more regularly updated GSV imagery.

Using street imagery and crowdsourcing internet marketplaces to measure motorcycle helmet use in Bangkok, Thailand

“…In general, the quality of the images is one significant limitation in GSV. In a study by Clews et al , the authors found GSV images to be less sensitive than in person observation when examining visible drinkers 34. In our study, it is unlikely that a helmet would have been completely missed, however, it is possible that certain types of hats may have been misclassified as helmets or vice versa.…”

Use of Tencent Street View Imagery for Visual Perception of Streets

“…At this point, the opening operator of mathematical morphology is required to remove the spurious points generated during the binarization process. The use of structural element B to conduct the opening operation of image A is denoted as A • B, as in Equation (20). This operation first erodes the image before dilating it.…”

“…A very wide range of urban studies was based on street view images, with examples including studies on three-dimensional (3D) urban reconstructions [11][12][13], specific scene recognition [14], investigations of plant and animal species [15][16][17], route selection [8,18], perceived safety evaluation [19], data extraction on alcohol consumption [20], evaluation of the visual perception of streets [21,22], and so on. In particular, the visual perception of streets serves as a basis for urban landscape planning and residential quality of life [22].…”

Assessing Google Street View Image Availability in Latin American Cities

“…Studies that compare data obtained from virtual audits in Google Street View to data from in-person audits generally find good concordance between the two techniques [3][4][5][6][7][8], although virtual auditing does not seem to work well for certain instruments [9,10]. Researchers note that image resolution can limit the reliable identification of small objects, and that the inability of researchers to control when images are taken limits Street View's usefulness in assessing variables that can change rapidly over time [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. This suggests that virtual audits are not a good substitution for in-person audits in all cases.…”