IntroductionThe proliferation of autonomous driving raises concerns about the psychological and behavioral adaptations of future drivers. One emerging challenge is the potential degradation of spatial knowledge due to reduced navigation and control over autonomous vehicles; however, limited research has examined this issue or potential solutions. The present study investigates how visualizing landmarks on an augmented reality head-up display (AR-HUD) influences incidental spatial knowledge acquisition during autonomous driving.MethodsWe developed an AR-HUD that visualizes both local (on-route) and distant (off-route) landmarks on the windshield and evaluated it using an immersive virtual reality (VR) simulation. Sixty-eight participants experienced one of four conditions in a 2 × 2 factorial design with windshield display (AR-HUD versus normal windshield) and road type (local road versus highway), while their eye movements were recorded. After the autonomous driving experience, participants completed multiple-choice questions assessing route, directional, and configurational spatial knowledge.ResultsCompared to a normal windshield, participants using the AR-HUD exhibited better route- and direction-related knowledge, while its benefit for configurational knowledge depended on road type. Eye-tracking data further indicated that the highway environment, characterized by fewer local and more distant landmarks, imposed greater difficulty for spatial information processing than local roads, and that the AR-HUD promoted more effective visual and cognitive engagement with task-relevant environmental features.DiscussionThese findings suggest that AR landmark visualization can support multiple levels of incidental spatial learning during autonomous driving and highlight the value of VR and eye tracking for evaluating future in-vehicle spatial interfaces.

Working from home (WFH) has been adopted as a key mitigation strategy in the COVID-19 pandemic; yet few research has studied its impact on pandemic outcomes. Using multiple sources of data including cellphone data and online survey during the pandemic, this study investigates the effect of WFH on intra-city health disparities during the COVID-19 pandemic in American cities. Pandemic data for zip code tabulation areas and cellphone mobility data for census block groups in New York City (NYC), Chicago, and Philadelphia are converted to census tract level, which are then merged with 2019 census data. WFH is measured with the proportion of workers who potentially can telework based on employment composition in census tracts and percentages of jobs in each industry that actually WFH during the pandemic. Results show that while infection and death rates are higher in NYC, intra-city disparities in pandemic outcomes are more pronounced in Philadelphia. Poisson regressions show a negative association between WFH and COVID-19 infection and death rates in NYC and Chicago, which is weakened by increased time spent at home during the pandemic and in minority neighborhoods (in NYC). In Philadelphia, WFH is barely relevant for infection rates but has a marginally positive association with death rates, which is also moderated by the time spent at home. This study demonstrates the relative effectiveness of WFH in mitigating pandemic outcomes and underscores the intersectionality between WFH and race/ethnicity and resident behaviors. It provides important policy implications for future pandemic mitigation.

BackgroundDespite the health benefits of urban green space, disparities in its access and use have long existed. Emerging evidence suggests an adverse impact of redlining, a discriminatory practice decades ago, on multiple health outcomes. However, whether and to what degree redlining contributes to these disparities remains unknown particularly during a pandemic. With newly available mobility data tracking the locations of large numbers of mobile devices, this study links historical redlining with changes in green space use during the COVID-19 pandemic.ObjectiveThis study examines how changes in park visits during the lockdown period (3/23/2020-8/2/2020) are associated with redlining across census tracts in three large U.S. cities.MethodsHOLC neighborhood redlining grade data were merged with SafeGraph mobility data at census tract level for New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Ordinary Least Square regressions were conducted to assess the association between dominant redlining grade and relative change in park visits in census tracts by comparing the lockdown period to the reference period. Spatial error and lag models were also used to account for potential spatial autocorrelation.ResultsPark visits during the lockdown period in 2020 decreased by at least one-third in the three cities. The influence of redlining varied across neighborhoods and cities. In New York City, neighborhoods with more redlined areas experienced the largest drop, sharper decreases concentrated in neighborhoods previously graded as "best" or "still desirable" in Philadelphia, but the effect was barely present in Chicago. In addition, changes in park visits are positively correlated between neighborhoods in New York City and Chicago, but it's not observed in Philadelphia.Impact StatementUsing emerging big mobility data, our study revealed large drops in park visits, a better measure than commonly-used access measures in capturing green space exposure, during the lockdown period. We found that historical redlining has a lasting impact on current green space use. More decreases in park visits were observed in the redlined areas in New York City, but patterns vary by neighborhood and city due to local-specific neighborhood dynamics. And changes in park visits were spatially, positively correlated across places.

Autonomous vehicles, which free drivers from driving, are gaining increasing interest for future travel needs. But the degradation of driver’s spatial knowledge will likely worsen when drivers no longer need to actively steer nor pay attention to the environment. This study extends the theory of visualising distant landmarks on mobile phone to windshield using Augmented Reality (AR), to support spatial learning. This study investigates the impact of AR distant landmarks (with vs. without AR landmarks) and road conditions (highway vs. local road) on acquiring spatial knowledge through an experiment using simulated videos of autonomous driving. Participants are randomly assigned to one of two scenarios to complete tasks which assessed their acquired spatial knowledge one the route-, directional, and configural levels. Results show that distant landmarks enhance the efficiency of acquiring route- and directional knowledge, although the effectiveness of acquiring route knowledge with AR landmarks is not significant on local road. Configurational knowledge is more likely impacted by the road type instead of the AR landmarks. The results indciate the necessity of carrying out follow-up studies on symbolising additional information in AR landmarks for supporting spatial learning and evaluate their impacts on the spatial knowledge at the configurational level.

New York City (NYC) was the epicenter of COVID-19 pandemic for a long time, and the government introduced a city-wide lockdown policy to mitigate the spread of virus. Minority communities, however, suffered disproportionally high percentage of infection and mortality rates, a disturbing phenomenon that deserves scrutiny. Adopting a spatial and temporal perspective, this study aims to investigate health disparities in this pandemic by focusing on mobility in the city. Considering both public transit and the lockdown policy essential factors that impact infection and mortality, this study introduced a measure indicating mobility-restricted transit as the spatial factor. Additional factors include ethnic minorities based on their nativity and three categories of social vulnerability: socioeconomic status, household composition, and housing type. This study selects eight phases, each of which consists of 2 weeks to derive infection and mortality rates to investigate the impacts of those factors. As infection and mortality data are published based on ZIP code, this study further estimates the infection and mortality rates at a finer level of census tract through spatial apportionment. Results reveal the significant impact of mobility-restricted transit on both infection and mortality and show certain clusters of neighborhoods being highly impacted. In addition, this study identifies neighborhoods where native-born and foreign-born of each ethnic minority (Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians) have high risk of infection and mortality. Through a spatial and temporal perspectives, this study identifies the complexity of patterns in minority health disparities in COVID-19 pandemic, which can inform policy makers for localized support to vulnerable neighborhoods to alleviate minority health disparities.

The world has adopted unprecedented lockdown as the key method to mitigate COVID-19; yet its effect on pandemic outcomes and health disparities remains largely unknown. Adopting a multilevel conceptual framework, this research investigates how city-level lockdown policy and public transit system shape mobility and thus intra-city health disparities, using New York City as a case study. With a spatial method and multiple sources of data, this research demonstrates the uneven impact of the lockdown policy and public transit system in shaping local pandemic outcomes. Census tracts with people spending more time at home have lower infection and death rates, while those with a higher density of transit stations have higher infection and death rates. Residential profile matters and census tracts with a higher concentration of disadvantaged population, such as Blacks, Hispanics, poor and elderly people, and people with no health insurance, have higher infection and death rates. Spatial analyses identify clusters where the lockdown policy was not effective and census tracts that share similar pandemic characteristics. Through the lens of mobility, this research advances knowledge of health disparities by focusing on institutional causes for health disparities and the role of the government through intervention policy and public transit system.

Abstract The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has affected human lives at all levels Maps visualizing this pandemic have become a valuable tool for public to retrieve and understand the situation in their areas of interest Some earlier maps visualize information at the level of country or state in the United States, but viewers could not access information at a finer level such as county Motivated by the necessity of visualizing information at a finer level, this study designs a thematic map displaying confirmed COVID-19 cases at the county level in the State of New York The thematic map utilizes a choropleth design with defined data classification and colors for symbolization This study then evaluates this designed thematic map with two other published maps: one from the New York State Department of Health and one from The New York Times The evaluation collects 147 valid responses from public all over the world Results show that choropleth design yields higher accuracy of map understanding In addition, the designed map in this study receives higher preference among participants This study suggests the importance of understanding the data, readers, and mapping purpose in the decision of data classification and symbolization in map design, as it contributes largely to the effectiveness of map interpretation

A visitor’s experience in space is one key research topic carried out by researchers from multiple disciplines. Regarding the architecture of a museum, research has shown that it is linked to a visitor’s spatial experience in that space. These spatial experiences are relating to aspects such as a visitor’s memory of location, feeling in the space, and making sense of exhibitions. Following the suggestion that architecture influences a visitor’s spatial experiences, we introduce a study addressing the accessibility of one’s vision, named visual access, formed by the architecture and its association with visitor’s exploration pattern. Additional approaches including observation and interviews were carried out to address this question. Results show that direct visual access has a higher influence than physical distance in a visitor’s decision for initial exploration of a museum. In addition, these results are also used to address the pattern of exploration taken by visitors.

Verbal descriptions are commonly used in daily lives for giving directions for wayfinding. They are valuable sources to understand underlying components that can contribute to spatial orientation, which is degrading with the growing use of routing services in navigation systems. Previous studies deconstruct and categorize all information embedded in spatial descriptions as a framework to investigate their roles in spatial orientation. Researchers look into the spatial descriptions given in different languages for their characteristics and suggest that characteristics vary in descriptions given in different languages. Adapting the same framework of categorizing information in spatial descriptions, this study compared directions given by English and Mandarin speakers. Results showed that the usage of orientation information is prominent in both languages. This type of information is not commonly included in routing services. Furthermore, comparisons between both languages revealed that English speakers provide detailed information to support orientation in wayfinding, which is different from some earlier suggestions derived from comparison between English and Japanese. This study also points out topics which are necessary for studies in the future.

Smartphones have become a significant platform in everyone’s daily lives. For example, maps and map-based services on smartphones bring great convenience for wayfinding. They affect users’ spatial awareness, however, due to their small sizes. That impacted spatial awareness can lead to degraded spatial knowledge and disorientation. This study intends to address these issues associated with spatial learning on smartphones by adapting cartographic and cognitive theories and investigating a new design for presenting spatial information on smartphones that can support users’ awareness of space. The design uses the distinctive identities of spatial locations beyond the mapped screen as landmarks and visualizes the identities and distances of landmarks in distance through visual variables. Following previous pilot studies, this study evaluates the effectiveness of using such a design on aspects related to spatial awareness. Results provide additional details on the advantage of using specific visual variables to enhance the acquisition of spatial knowledge and spatial orientation. Although smart devices are ubiquitous in everyone’s lives, it is still important to address the cognitive issues between those devices and their users. This study provides evidence that design can further contribute to the improvement of map-based applications on smartphones, which provides convenience and enhances users’ spatial learning of new places. Key Words: off-screen landmarks, orientation, spatial awareness, visual variable, visualization.

This chapter assesses underlying spatial relations for pedestrian wayfinding by examining navigational directions given in both forms of sketch maps and verbal descriptions. An experiment was conducted to investigate characteristics of navigational directions provided by participants in the form of sketch maps and verbal descriptions. The authors were specifically interested in the landmarks and spatial relationships such as route topology, linear order relation, and relative orientation extracted from the navigational directions. A new ontological approach to sketch and verbal interpretations was adopted for spatial analysis. The results pointed to the advantage of including sketch components into pedestrian navigation systems over solely turn-by-turn instructions. In addition, the results showed the differences between visual and verbal directions, which suggest the necessity of having different levels of directions for giving specific types of navigational instructions.

Landmarks are important elements in route instructions communicated for wayfinding in unfamiliar environments. This paper aims to investigate the distribution of local landmarks in human sketch maps provided for wayfinding purpose. We investigated sets of route instructions given by student participants who were asked to give directions in environments that they are very familiar with to someone unfamiliar. These environments differ in size as well as their relation to city centers. In particular, one route goes into the city, one route goes through the city center, and the third route ranges between two cities. The results show that local landmarks are distributed differently in each route and showing high density of landmarks at some portions of the route. The study further clarifies the distribution of landmarks along routes with relation to the length of the route. It also contributes to the work concerning the cognitive aspects of wayfinding with a specific focus on the distribution of landmarks in route instructions.

Maps on mobile devices provide the convenience of accessing spatial information of the surroundings. They also raise the concern that the small screen size impacts user's acquisition of spatial knowledge as the small size causes the fragmentation of spatial knowledge. This fragmentation leads to the expense of more cognitive efforts and degradation of spatial knowledge. Following some effective approaches of representing distance to off-screen locations as contextual cues, this paper reports a design that incorporates not only the direction but also the distance using symbols. In addition, this study uses three different visual variables including size, color value, and crispness at the ordinal level of measurement and then compares their effectiveness on the perception of distance. Results show that color value contributes the least to the perception of distance. Size leads to slightly higher accuracy than crispness in comparing distances of off-screen landmarks. This study provides valuable information to further explore the impacts of different visual variables that could facilitate the acquisition of spatial knowledge on mobile devices. This study also points out the necessity of follow-up studies to clarify some issues in the current design as well as its impact on actual wayfinding performance.

Spatial literacy, the skill of learning about and improving interaction with one's surroundings, is an inherently transdisciplinary competency transcending from STEM to social sciences and arts. Spatial literacy is central in primary and secondary school curricula in many countries, and not only possesses the potentials of individual success but also fosters the importance of spatial information use in society. There is wide agreement on the transdisciplinary power of spatial thinking: Goodchild (2006) pointed out its importance for curricula in all subjects: from STEM, to social sciences and arts. Many tasks in the most recent PISA study (OECD 2014) on general problem-solving refer to spatial problems. The National Research Council (NRC) report "Learning to think spatially" suggests solutions for geographic information systems (GIS) as a support system to think spatially (Committee on Support for Thinking Spatially 2006). Approaches using minimal GIS for all grade levels at school, when particular spatial concepts were used incidentally, follow this direction in several studies (Bartoschek et al. 2010; Battersby et al. 2006; Marsh et al. 2007). Curricula all over the world reflect spatial competency training, although there are large differences in the way countries implemented this; the spatial tasks, level of abstraction, and learning stage of lessons in spatial literacy differ substantially.

Verbal route descriptions are common in our daily lives that give us wayfinding directions. They also are important in cognitive research as they lend insight on processes associated with wayfinding. This paper reports a study that investigates the influence of familiarity and spatial abilities on acquiring spatial knowledge from verbal route directions. The familiarity of the participant was removed by replacing all names of spatial entities in the route instructions given by the same person. Specifically, the types of acquired spatial knowledge addressed are direction, distance, and configurational aspects of sketched maps. Results show that familiarity plays a crucial role on acquisition of spatial knowledge at the survey level. In particular, familiarity leads to fewer errors in directional estimation, but overestimation of distance. Spatial abilities further influence one’s knowledge of distance such that higher spatial abilities lead to more accurate distance estimation in new environments. With that said, lower spatial abilities do not contribute to distance estimation in both familiar and new environments. Furthermore, measures on sketch maps show that familiarity does not lead to dramatically different sketch maps while variation exist. These results also point out the necessity of follow-up studies to address the orientation specificity in familiar and unfamiliar environment.

Although the importance of landmarks for human navigation and for orientation is well accepted, most of today’s navigation systems hardly incorporate any landmark information or information supporting orientation. Different from previous research that only addressed turn-by-turn instructions in verbal forms and landmarks at decision points, the present study provides empirical evidence that human-generated wayfinding instructions are not solely turn-by-turn but the majority of instructions provide orientation information. We propose a new classification scheme for identifying information in wayfinding instructions that will not only support orientation but also facilitate construction of mental map. We explored and compared two forms of representations—visual sketch map and verbal instructions. Results revealed that landmark information is important in human wayfinding instructions with particular importance of local landmarks along the route and global landmarks that support orientation. In addition, sketch maps contained more global landmarks than verbal instructions. In contrast to turn-by-turn navigation, we found that many instructions in human route descriptions do not always refer to turning actions but to orientation. We conducted interviews with a set of raters on what they consider helpful information in both forms of representations. These results confirmed our findings and supported that future route descriptions can be more meaningful and helpful when they are enriched with orientation information as they conform to how humans structure wayfinding instructions.

Dominant approaches in computer-assisted wayfinding support adhere to the deeply problematic principles of turn-by-turn navigation. In this article, we suggest a new approach called Wayfinding Through Orientation, which supports the acquisition of spatial knowledge and cognitive mapping for advancing the user's spatial orientation. Being oriented on one's way is a prerequisite to enabling people to verify instructions and to incorporate new spatial information into their existing knowledge structure. In three studies described in this article we first present empirical evidence that people can be supported in survey knowledge acquisition through suitable wayfinding instructions. Consequently, we explore orientation information in human wayfinding instructions. Finally, we outline how orientation information can be communicated within a prototypically implemented navigation assistance system.

While bringing portability and convenience to their users, the small screen size of mobile devices raises the concern that it might impact a user’s acquisition of spatial knowledge. Visualizing information of off-screen objects on mobile device has thus been introduced as a possible way to overcome this problem. Some approaches encode the distance to off-screen objects very well, but they have not considered the identities of objects, which could serve as easily-recognizable landmarks of recognition. Other approaches have addressed the visualization of distant objects’ identities as landmarks, but they have not considered the representation of distance to their actual locations. Following these approaches, this study introduces the use of visual variable size in the design of symbols for off-screen landmarks to translate both information about both direction and distance. To further investigate the efficiency of using these graduated size symbols, we apply ratio and ordinal levels of measurement to assign size to the symbols. Results show, size at the ordinal level leads to higher efficiency in understanding distance to off-screen locations. Both designs, however, yield challenges in participants’ understanding of distance based on the symbol’s size. As the initial step of investigating the use of visual variables in the design of symbols for off-screen landmarks, we suggest more visual variables be considered in follow-up designs to provide a more comprehensive understanding regarding the effectiveness of visualizing off-screen landmarks on mobile devices.

Mobile phones have become so popular in navigation. Empirical studies, however, have implied several pitfalls of using these mobile systems. First of all, generated navigation guides with continuous routing information keep the users being mindless of the environment that impacts their acquisition of spatial knowledge. In addition, the small size of mobile screen causes the fragmentation of learned spatial knowledge. In order to enhance spatial orientation using mobile phones, designs attempt to display distant landmarks on screen as contextual cues to overcome those pitfalls. Some of these designs not only decrease the frequency of zooming but also contribute to users’ spatial orientation by showing the direction to distant landmarks. Following the same direction, this study introduces an improved design that not only displays the direction but also the distance to distant landmarks by using size as an indicator of the distance. Considering human mind is not perfect at perceiving and convening accurate Euclidean information, the distance concept is represented by icons in different sizes. In particular, the authors design two kinds of mechanism, one of which is using icons at the ratio level that change in size continuously according to an established ratio and the actual distance between the user and a distant landmark. The other mechanism is using icons at ordinal level with three assigned sizes of icon based on a certain range of distance implying near, middle, and far. A designed user study was carried out to compare the efficiency of these types of mechanisms. Results show that ordinal icons are more effective than ratio icons in visualizing distances between distant landmarks. But users have challenges distinguishing distant landmarks from local landmarks regardless of the mechanism. A further step is needed to explore additional options of representing distance.