Assessing the Human Perceptions of Physical Environmental Stressors Through Behavior Response Examination

Environmental stressors considerably influence the health and safety of humans and must thus be continuously monitored to enhance the urban environments and associated safety. Environmental stressors typically act as stimuli and lead to behavioral changes that can be easily identified. These behavioral responses can thus be used as indicators to clarify people's perceptions of environmental stressors. Therefore, in this study, a framework for assessing environmental stressors based on human behavioral responses was developed. A preliminary experiment was conducted to investigate the feasibility of the framework. Human behavioral and physiological data were collected using wearable sensors, and a survey was performed to determine the psychological responses. Humans were noted to consistently exhibit changes in the movement and speed in the presence of physical environmental stressors, as physiological and psychological responses. The results demonstrated the potential of using behavioral responses as indicators of the human perceptions toward environmental stressors. The proposed framework can be used for urban environment monitoring to enhance the quality and safety.