Segments and demographic variables predicting Covid-19 protective behaviors.

Here we used remote sensing data from multiple sources (time-series of Landsat and Sentinel images) to map the impervious surface area (ISA) at five-year intervals from 1990 to 2015, and then converted the results into a standardized dataset of the built-up area for 433 Chinese cities with 300,000 inhabitants or more, which were listed in the United Nations (UN) World Urbanization Prospects (WUP) database (including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan). We employed a range of spectral indices to generate the 1990–2015 ISA maps in urban areas based on remotely sensed data acquired from multiple sources. In this process, various types of auxiliary data were used to create the desired products for urban areas through manual segmentation of peri-urban and rural areas together with reference to several freely available products of urban extent derived from ISA data using automated urban–rural segmentation methods. After that, following the well-established rules adopted by the UN, we carried out the conversion to the standardized built-up area products from the 1990–2015 ISA maps in urban areas, which conformed to the definition of urban agglomeration area (UAA). Finally, we implemented data postprocessing to guarantee the spatial accuracy and temporal consistency of the final product.The standardized urban built-up area dataset (SUBAD–China) introduced here is the first product using the same definition of UAA adopted by the WUP database for 433 county and higher-level cities in China. The comparisons made with contemporary data produced by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the World Bank and UN-habitat indicate that our results have a high spatial accuracy and good temporal consistency and thus can be used to characterize the process of urban expansion in China.The SUBAD–China contains 2,598 vector files in shapefile format containing data for all China's cities listed in the WUP database that have different urban sizes and income levels with populations over 300,000. Attached with it, we also provided the distribution of validation points for the 1990–2010 ISA products of these 433 Chinese cities in shapefile format and the confusion matrices between classified data and reference data during different time periods as a Microsoft Excel Open XML Spreadsheet (XLSX) file.Furthermore, The standardized built-up area products for such cities will be consistently updated and refined to ensure the quality of their spatiotemporal coverage and accuracy. The production of this dataset together with the usage of population counts derived from the WUP database will close some of the data gaps in the calculation of SDG11.3.1 and benefit other downstream applications relevant to a combined analysis of the spatial and socio-economic domains in urban areas.

Food festivals have been a growing tourism sector in recent years due to their contributions to a region’s economic, marketing, brand, and social growth. This study analyses the demand for the Bahrain food festival. The stated objectives were: i) To identify the motivational dimensions of the demand for the food festival, (ii) To determine the segments of the demand for the food festival, and (iii) To establish the relationship between the demand segments and socio-demographic aspects. The food festival investigated was the Bahrain Food Festival held in Bahrain, located on the east coast of the Persian Gulf. The sample consisted of 380 valid questionnaires and was taken using social networks from those attending the event. The statistical techniques used were factorial analysis and the K-means grouping method. The results show five motivational dimensions: Local food, Art, Entertainment, Socialization, and Escape and novelty. In addition, two segments were found; the first, Entertainment and novelties, is related to attendees who seek to enjoy the festive atmosphere and discover new restaurants. The second is Multiple motives, formed by attendees with several motivations simultaneously. This segment has the highest income and expenses, making it the most important group for developing plans and strategies. The results will contribute to the academic literature and the organizers of food festivals.

BackgroundSegmentation of heterogeneous patient populations into parsimonious and relatively homogenous groups with similar healthcare needs can facilitate healthcare resource planning and development of effective integrated healthcare interventions for each segment. We aimed to apply a data-driven, healthcare utilization-based clustering analysis to segment a regional health system patient population and validate its discriminative ability on 4-year longitudinal healthcare utilization and mortality data.MethodsWe extracted data from the Singapore Health Services Electronic Health Intelligence System, an electronic medical record database that included healthcare utilization (inpatient admissions, specialist outpatient clinic visits, emergency department visits, and primary care clinic visits), mortality, diseases, and demographics for all adult Singapore residents who resided in and had a healthcare encounter with our regional health system in 2012. Hierarchical clustering analysis (Ward’s linkage) and K-means cluster analysis using age and healthcare utilization data in 2012 were applied to segment the selected population. These segments were compared using their demographics (other than age) and morbidities in 2012, and longitudinal healthcare utilization and mortality from 2013–2016.ResultsAmong 146,999 subjects, five distinct patient segments “Young, healthy”; “Middle age, healthy”; “Stable, chronic disease”; “Complicated chronic disease” and “Frequent admitters” were identified. Healthcare utilization patterns in 2012, morbidity patterns and demographics differed significantly across all segments. The “Frequent admitters” segment had the smallest number of patients (1.79% of the population) but consumed 69% of inpatient admissions, 77% of specialist outpatient visits, 54% of emergency department visits, and 23% of primary care clinic visits in 2012. 11.5% and 31.2% of this segment has end stage renal failure and malignancy respectively. The validity of cluster-analysis derived segments is supported by discriminative ability for longitudinal healthcare utilization and mortality from 2013–2016. Incident rate ratios for healthcare utilization and Cox hazards ratio for mortality increased as patient segments increased in complexity. Patients in the “Frequent admitters” segment accounted for a disproportionate healthcare utilization and 8.16 times higher mortality rate.ConclusionOur data-driven clustering analysis on a general patient population in Singapore identified five patient segments with distinct longitudinal healthcare utilization patterns and mortality risk to provide an evidence-based segmentation of a regional health system’s healthcare needs.

Population segment definitions.

Segmentation outcome and characteristics.