An Innovative Random-Forest-Based Model to Assess the Health Impacts of Regular Commuting Using Non-Invasive Wearable Sensors

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 23; no. 6; p. 3274
• Main Authors: Sharif, Mhd Saeed, Raj Theeng Tamang, Madhav, Fu, Cynthia H Y, Baker, Aaron, Alzahrani, Ahmed Ibrahim, Alalwan, Nasser
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 01-03-2023; MDPI
• Subjects: Adult; Analysis; Bayes Theorem; Bicycles; Biosensors; Blood pressure; Brain research; Commuting; Correlation analysis; EEG sensors; Electrocardiography; Electroencephalography; Electroencephalography - methods; Electromyography; Health; Heart rate; Humans; Hypertension; Machine learning; Mental health; Physiology; Prediction models; predictive models; Psychological stress; Questionnaires; Respiration; Sensors; Skin; Stress (Psychology); Stress analysis; stress assessment; Support Vector Machine; Support vector machines; Surveys and Questionnaires; Transportation; Wearable Electronic Devices; wearable sensors; Wearable technology; United Kingdom; New Jersey; Taiwan; commuting; blood pressure; stress assessment; EEG sensors; wearable sensors; predictive models
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s23063274

Regular commutes to work can cause chronic stress, which in turn can cause a physical and emotional reaction. The recognition of mental stress in its earliest stages is very necessary for effective clinical treatment. This study investigated the impact of commuting on human health based on qualitative and quantitative measures. The quantitative measures included electroencephalography (EEG) and blood pressure (BP), as well as weather temperature, while qualitative measures were established from the PANAS questionnaire, and included age, height, medication, alcohol status, weight, and smoking status. This study recruited 45 (n) healthy adults, including 18 female and 27 male participants. The modes of commute were bus (n = 8), driving (n = 6), cycling (n = 7), train (n = 9), tube (n = 13), and both bus and train (n = 2). The participants wore non-invasive wearable biosensor technology to measure EEG and blood pressure during their morning commute for 5 days in a row. A correlation analysis was applied to find the significant features associated with stress, as measured by a reduction in positive ratings in the PANAS. This study created a prediction model using random forest, support vector machine, naive Bayes, and K-nearest neighbor. The research results show that blood pressure and EEG beta waves were significantly increased, and the positive PANAS rating decreased from 34.73 to 28.60. The experiments revealed that measured systolic blood pressure was higher post commute than before the commute. For EEG waves, the model shows that the EEG beta low power exceeded alpha low power after the commute. Having a fusion of several modified decision trees within the random forest helped increase the performance of the developed model remarkably. Significant promising results were achieved using random forest with an accuracy of 91%, while K-nearest neighbor, support vector machine, and naive Bayes performed with an accuracy of 80%, 80%, and 73%, respectively.