ActivityLog−HeatMappers: A Novel Research Data Collection Tool for Logging Activities, Locations, and Environment Data

ActivityLog is a general mobile phone application that helps urban climate researchers study spatial-temporal dynamics of people’s interaction with urban environment. Data collected through ActivityLog are timestamped, geo-referenced and possibly paired up with temperature and relative humidity data such as Kestrel Drop (a Bluetooth enabled environmental data logger). Specifically, ActivityLog - HeatMappers is designed to support the development of HeatMapper Citizen Science project, which is part of the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience (KER) project launched between ASU and Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust to understand the heat vulnerable population in Maricopa County, Arizona. ActivityLog - HeatMappers has five main functionalities. First, it notifies users in a preset hour interval (every two hours, etc.) to take a quick check-in about where they are and what they are doing. Traditionally, researchers use paper-based activity log survey to serve this purpose, which is inconvenient and the paper activity log survey data are mostly messy and difficult to clean up and use. Secondly, it periodically collects users’ locations at a certain pre-defined interval. Smart phones use built-in GPS, cellular network and Wi-Fi to determine both outdoor and indoor locations. Thus, location data collected through smart phones have better spatial accuracy and precision compared with data collected from ordinary GPS devices, especially for the indoor environment. Thirdly, it can be paired with a Kestrel Drop device to inform users about current temperature, relative humidity and heat stress index, and it also logs environmental data at certain time-interval in the background to pair with location information. Fourthly, the mobile application contains a link to HeatMapper survey from Qualtric platform. It reduces the time to clean survey data from paper-based survey and makes it easier for HeatMapper volunteers to find and finish the survey. Lastly, all collected data (location, time, temperature, relative humidity, heat stress index, human activity) are synced with a cloud database that is able to help researchers to monitor data collection progress in a real-time manner. The code for creating ActivityLog will be shared in the online open-source platform such as GitHub, and the application is freely available at both Apple Store and Google Play. Future researchers who are interested in customizing the application for their own research purpose can take the open source code as a template.