The Built Environment Assessment of Residential Areas in Wuhan during the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak

Heli Lu, Menglin Xia, Ziyuan Qin, Siqi Lu, Ruimin Guan, Yuna Yang, Changhong Miao and Taizheng Chen
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Heli Lu: College of Geography and Environmental Science/Key Research Institute of Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development & Collaborative Innovation Center on Yellow River Civilization of Henan Province, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China
Menglin Xia: College of Geography and Environmental Science/Key Research Institute of Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development & Collaborative Innovation Center on Yellow River Civilization of Henan Province, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China
Ziyuan Qin: College of Geography and Environmental Science/Key Research Institute of Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development & Collaborative Innovation Center on Yellow River Civilization of Henan Province, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China
Siqi Lu: Department of Geography, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-4148, USA
Ruimin Guan: College of Geography and Environmental Science/Key Research Institute of Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development & Collaborative Innovation Center on Yellow River Civilization of Henan Province, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China
Yuna Yang: College of Geography and Environmental Science/Key Research Institute of Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development & Collaborative Innovation Center on Yellow River Civilization of Henan Province, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China
Changhong Miao: College of Geography and Environmental Science/Key Research Institute of Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development & Collaborative Innovation Center on Yellow River Civilization of Henan Province, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China
Taizheng Chen: College of Geography and Environmental Science/Key Research Institute of Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development & Collaborative Innovation Center on Yellow River Civilization of Henan Province, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 13, 1-20

Abstract: The COVID-19 epidemic has emerged as one of the biggest challenges, and the world is focused on preventing and controlling COVID-19. Although there is still insufficient understanding of how environmental conditions may impact the COVID-19 pandemic, airborne transmission is regarded as an important environmental factor that influences the spread of COVID-19. The natural ventilation potential (NVP) is critical for airborne infection control in the micro-built environment, where infectious and susceptible people share air spaces. Taking Wuhan as the research area, we evaluated the NVP in residential areas to combat COVID-19 during the outbreak. We determined four fundamental residential area layouts (point layout, parallel layout, center-around layout, and mixed layout) based on the semantic similarity model for point of interest (POI) picking. Our analyses indicated that the center-around and point layout had a higher NVP, while the mixed and parallel layouts had a lower NVP in winter and spring. Further analysis showed that the proportion of the worst NVP has been rising, while the proportion of the poor NVP remains very high in Wuhan. This study suggested the need to efficiently improve the residential area layout in Wuhan for better urban ventilation to combat COVID-19 without losing other benefits.

Keywords: Wuhan; COVID-19 outbreak; environmental factors; residential area layout; natural ventilation potential (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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