Spatial analysis of falls in an urban community of Hong Kong

Abstract

Background: Falls are an issue of great public health concern. This study focuses on outdoor falls within an urban community in Hong Kong. Urban environmental hazards are often place-specific and dependent upon the built features, landscape characteristics, and habitual activities. Therefore, falls must be examined with respect to local situations.

Results: This paper uses spatial analysis methods to map fall occurrences and examine possible environmental attributes of falls in an urban community of Hong Kong. The Nearest neighbour hierarchical (Nnh) and Standard Deviational Ellipse (SDE) techniques can offer additional insights about the circumstances and environmental factors that contribute to falls. The results affirm the multi-factorial nature of falls at specific locations and for selected groups of the population.

Conclusion: The techniques to detect hot spots of falls yield meaningful results that enable the identification of high risk locations. The combined use of descriptive and spatial analyses can be beneficial to policy makers because different preventive measures can be devised based on the types of environmental risk factors identified. The analyses are also important preludes to establishing research hypotheses for more focused studies.

Figure 1

Fall locations in Mong Kok, Hong Kong, 2006–07.

Figure 2

A comparison of Nnh clusters using 50 meters as the threshold distance and varying minimum points per clusters.

Figure 3

A comparison of Nnh clusters using 100 meters as the threshold distance and varying minimum points per clusters.

Figure 4

Spatial spread of falls by non-spatial characteristics (I).

Figure 5

Spatial spread of falls by non-spatial characteristics (II).

Figure 6

Multiple reasons of falls at the 11 identified fall hot spots.

Figure 7

Examples of flattened and leveled street curbing.