Deep Learning Methods for Urban Analysis and Health Estimation of Obesity

In the 20th and 21st centuries, urban populations have increased dramatically with a whole host of impacts to human health that remain unknown. Research has shown significant correlations between design features in the built environment and human health, but this research has remained limited. A better understanding of this relationship could allow urban planners and architects to design healthier cities and buildings for an increasingly urbanized population. This research addresses this problem by using discriminative deep learning in combination with satellite imagery of census tracts to estimate rates of obesity. Data from the California Health Interview Survey is used to train a Convolutional Neural Network that uses satellite imagery of selected census tracts to estimate rates of obesity. This research contributes knowledge on methods for applying deep learning to urban health estimation, as well as, methods for identifying correlations between urban morphology and human health.