Oury Jacob D, Ritter Frank E, Cissé Fatoumata B
College of IST, Penn State, University Park, PA, USA.
Disaster Med Public Health Prep. 2022 Oct;16(5):1817-1821. doi: 10.1017/dmp.2021.235. Epub 2021 Jul 22.
Lack of mask use during large public events might spread COVID-19. It is now possible to measure this and similar public health information using publicly available webcams. We demonstrate a rapid assessment approach for measuring mask usage at a public event.
We monitored crowds at public areas in Sturgis, SD using a live, high-definition, town-sponsored video stream to analyze the prevalence of mask wearing. We developed a rapid coding procedure for mask wearing and analyzed brief (5 to 25 min) video segments to assess mask-wearing compliance in outdoor public areas. We calculated compliance estimates and compared reliability among the human coders.
We were able to observe and quantify public behavior on the public streets. This approach rapidly estimated public health information (e.g., 512 people observed over 25 minutes with 2.3% mask usage) available on the same day. Coders produced reliable estimates across a sample of videos for counting masked users and mask-wearing proportion. Our video data is stored in Databrary.org.
This approach has implications for disaster responses and public health. The approach is easy to use, can provide same day results, and can provide public health stakeholders with key information on public behavior.
在大型公共活动期间不佩戴口罩可能会传播新冠病毒。现在可以使用公开可用的网络摄像头来测量此类公共卫生信息。我们展示了一种用于测量公共活动中口罩佩戴情况的快速评估方法。
我们使用南达科他州斯特吉斯市由镇政府赞助的实时高清视频流，对公共场所的人群进行监测，以分析口罩佩戴的流行情况。我们开发了一种用于口罩佩戴情况的快速编码程序，并分析简短（5至25分钟）的视频片段，以评估户外公共场所的口罩佩戴合规情况。我们计算了合规估计值，并比较了人工编码员之间的可靠性。
我们能够观察和量化公共街道上的公众行为。这种方法能够快速估计同一天可得的公共卫生信息（例如，在25分钟内观察到512人，口罩佩戴率为2.3%）。编码员在一系列视频样本中对佩戴口罩的用户数量和口罩佩戴比例进行计数时得出了可靠的估计值。我们的视频数据存储在Databrary.org上。
这种方法对灾难应对和公共卫生具有重要意义。该方法易于使用，可以提供当天的结果，并且可以为公共卫生利益相关者提供有关公众行为的关键信息。
