Digital Ethology: Human Behavior in Geospatial Context

An edited collection that looks deeply at how humans transform their environments and how these environments, in turn, shape humans.

Countless permutations of physical, built, and social environments surround us in space and time, influencing the air we breathe, how hot or cold we are, how many steps we take, and with whom we interact as we go about our daily lives. Assessing the dynamic processes that play out between humans and the environment is challenging. Digital Ethology, edited by Tomáš Paus and Hye-Chung Kum, explores how aggregate area-level data, produced at multiple locations and points in time, can reveal bidirectional—and iterative—relationships between human behavior and the environment through their digital footprints.

Experts from geospatial and data science, behavioral and brain science, epidemiology and public health, ethics, law, and urban planning consider how humans transform their environments and how environments shape human behavior.


Contributors
José Balsa-Barreiro, Kim A. Bard, Steven Bedrick, Michael Brauer, Thomas Brinkhoff, Nitesh V. Chawla, Tamas Dávid-Barrett, Megan Doerr, Guillaume Dumas, Peter Ejbye-Ernst, Sophia Frangou, Camilla Bank Friis, Jason Gilliland, Kimmo Kaski, Heidi Keller, Fabio Kon, Hye-Chung Kum, Lasse Suonperä Liebst, Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard, Gina S. Lovasi, Daniel P. Lupp, Claudia Bauzer Medeiros, Maria Melchior, Mónica Menendez, Virginia Pallante, Tomáš Paus, Beate Ritz, Sven Sandin, Abeed Sarker, Cason D. Schmit, Lindsey Smith, Kimberly M. Thompson, Henning Tiemeier, Michele C. Weigle

Tomáš Paus is Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, Faculty of Medicine, and Scientist at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Sainte-Justine, University of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Hye-Chung Kum is Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management with joint appointments in the Departments of Computer Science & Engineering and Industrial Systems & Engineering at Texas A&M University, where she is the founding director of the Population Informatics Lab.