The role of alcohol outlet visits derived from mobile phone location data in enhancing domestic violence prediction at the neighborhood level

Keywords: Domestic violence, alcohol outlet visit, mobile phone location data, points of interest, machine learning
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 21

Abstract

Domestic violence (DV) is a serious public health issue, with 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men experiencing some form of partner-related violence every year. Existing research has shown a strong association between alcohol use and DV at the individual level. Accordingly, alcohol use could also be a predictor for DV at the neighborhood level, helping identify the neighborhoods where DV is more likely to happen. However, it is difficult and costly to collect data that can represent neighborhood-level alcohol use especially for a large geographic area. In this work, we propose to derive neighborhood-level alcohol outlet visits from anonymized mobile phone location data, and investigate whether the derived visits can better predict DV at the neighborhood level. We use the mobile phone location data provided by the company SafeGraph, which is freely available to researchers and which contains information about how people visit various points-of-interest (POIs) including alcohol outlets. We present the method for deriving neighborhood-level alcohol outlet visits, and experiment with four different statistical and machine learning models to understand the role of alcohol outlet visits in enhancing DV prediction based on the empirical DV data from the City of Chicago. The results reveal the effectiveness of the derived alcohol outlets visits in helping identify the neighborhoods that are more likely to suffer from DV. From the perspective of smart city planning, policy makers could put more attention to these identified neighborhoods when considering policies related to DV intervention and alcohol outlet licensing.