Yimeng Song

Yimeng Song
Yale University | YU · School of the Environment

Doctor of Psychology

About

103
Publications
90,016
Reads
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11,672
Citations
Introduction
Dr. Yimeng SONG is currently a Postdoctoral Associate in Prof. Michelle L. Bell’s research group at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Before joining Yale in July 2022, Dr. Song served as a Research Assistant Professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research mainly focuses on the application of spatial big data analytics in the field of urban environments, human mobility, exposure assessment, and environmental health.
Additional affiliations
January 2021 - June 2022
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Position
  • Research Assistant Professor
September 2019 - December 2020
The University of Hong Kong
Position
  • PostDoc Position
March 2018 - July 2018
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Position
  • Visiting Scholar
Education
August 2015 - July 2019
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Field of study
  • Geography and Resource Managment
August 2013 - July 2014
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Field of study
  • Geo-information Science
August 2010 - August 2012
Peking University
Field of study
  • Economics

Publications

Publications (103)
Article
Full-text available
Background: Heat is known to affect many health outcomes, but more evidence is needed on the impact of rising temperatures on crime and/or violence. Objectives: We conducted a systematic review with meta-analysis regarding the influence of hot temperatures on crime and/or violence. Methods: In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we evalu...
Article
Full-text available
Urban greenspace has a profound impact on public health by purifying the air, blocking bacteria, and creating activity venues. Due to people’s different position, the greenspace exposure to different age groups changes at various times. In this study, we combined NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) and GVI (green view index) green indices...
Article
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Greenspace, offering multifaceted ecological and socioeconomic benefits to the nature system and human society, is integral to the 11th Sustainable Development Goal pertaining to cities and communities. Spatially and temporally explicit information on greenspace is a premise to gauge the balance between its supply and demand. However, existing effo...
Data
This appendix provides detailed information on the methods for the paper “Global fertility in 204 countries and territories, 1950–2021 with forecasts to 2100: a comprehensive demographic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021”
Article
Full-text available
Dynamic gridded population data are crucial in fields such as disaster reduction, public health, urban planning, and global change studies. Despite the use of multi-source geospatial data and advanced machine learning models, current frameworks for population spatialization often struggle with spatial non-stationarity, temporal generalizability, an...
Article
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Loneliness may contribute to chronic diseases, while neighbourhood green space is increasingly understood to benefit health. However, whether green space is associated with loneliness is less understood, especially for an ageing population. This study aims to explore the relationship between different measures of green space and loneliness among mi...
Article
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Background Detailed, comprehensive, and timely reporting on population health by underlying causes of disability and premature death is crucial to understanding and responding to complex patterns of disease and injury burden over time and across age groups, sexes, and locations. The availability of disease burden estimates can promote evidence-base...
Article
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Background Regular, detailed reporting on population health by underlying cause of death is fundamental for public health decision making. Cause-specific estimates of mortality and the subsequent effects on life expectancy worldwide are valuable metrics to gauge progress in reducing mortality rates. These estimates are particularly important follow...
Article
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Background Accurate assessments of current and future fertility-including overall trends and changing population age structures across countries and regions-are essential to help plan for the profound social, economic, environmental, and geopolitical challenges that these changes will bring. Estimates and projections of fertility are necessary to i...
Article
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Background Disorders affecting the nervous system are diverse and include neurodevelopmental disorders, late-life neurodegeneration, and newly emergent conditions, such as cognitive impairment following COVID-19. Previous publications from the Global Burden of Disease, Injuries, and Risk Factor Study estimated the burden of 15 neurological conditio...
Article
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Background Estimates of demographic metrics are crucial to assess levels and trends of population health outcomes. The profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on populations worldwide has underscored the need for timely estimates to understand this unprecedented event within the context of long-term population health trends. The Global Burden of D...
Article
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Intensifying wildfires and human settlement expansion have placed more people and infrastructure at the wildland–urban interface (WUI) areas under risk. Effective wildfire management and policy response are needed to protect ecosystems and residential communities; however, maps containing spatially and temporally explicit information on the distrib...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Little is known about how public open space (POS) environment quality and vitality influence older adults’ functional ability and mental health over time. POS vitality refers to the capacity of POS to accommodate a variety of users and activities. We undertook a four-year longitudinal survey of 2081 older adults in Hong Kong to investigate longitud...
Article
Monitoring long-term variations in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is essential for environmental management and epidemiological studies. While satellite-based statistical/machine-learning methods can be used for estimating high-resolution ground-level PM2.5 concentration data, their applications have been hindered by limited accuracy in daily esti...
Article
Background: Public housing estate is a key determinant of community health risk in American/European cities. However, how forms/characteristics of compact/hilly public housing's neighbourhoods affect dementia among Asian seniors was underestimated. Design: This was a cross-sectional study. Methods: A total of 2,077 seniors living in Hong Kong'...
Article
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Background Reducing the burden of death due to infection is an urgent global public health priority. Previous studies have estimated the number of deaths associated with drug-resistant infections and sepsis and found that infections remain a leading cause of death globally. Understanding the global burden of common bacterial pathogens (both suscept...
Article
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Context The dramatic expansion of urban lands has caused widespread cropland losses in China, yet little evidence is given on the progress of such transformation spatial–temporal explicitly. Objectives The present study aims to disentangle the underlying interaction between urban expansion and cropland loss as well as its socioeconomic drivers and...
Article
Little is known about how public open space (POS) environment quality and vitality influence older adults' functional ability and mental health over time. POS vitality refers to the capacity of POS to accommodate a variety of users and activities. We undertook a four-year longitudinal survey of 2081 older adults in Hong Kong to investigate longitud...
Article
Full-text available
Background and aims The disease burden attributable to metabolic risk factors is rapidly increasing in China, especially in older people. The objective of this study was to (i) estimate the pattern and trend of six metabolic risk factors and attributable causes in China from 1990 to 2019, (ii) ascertain its association with societal development, an...
Article
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Timely and accurate population mapping plays an essential role in a wide range of critical applications. Benefiting from the emergence of multi-source geospatial datasets and the development of spatial statistics and machine learning, multi-scale population mapping with high temporal resolutions has been made possible. However, the over-complex mod...
Preprint
Full-text available
Intensifying wildfires and human settlement expansion have placed more people and infrastructure at the wildland–urban interface (WUI) areas under risk. Wildfire management and policy response are needed to protect ecosystems and residential communities; however, maps containing spatially explicit information on the distribution of WUI areas are li...
Article
Full-text available
Aerosols significantly affect climate change, and ambient aerosols are related to various adverse health outcomes. Satellite aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrieved by the MAIAC (Multiangle Implementation of Atmospheric Correct) algorithm provides a unique opportunity to represent worldwide local-scale gradients of aerosol loading. Although the MAIAC...
Article
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Background: Understanding the magnitude of cancer burden attributable to potentially modifiable risk factors is crucial for development of effective prevention and mitigation strategies. We analysed results from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019 to inform cancer control planning efforts globally. Methods:...
Article
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Background: The global burden of lower respiratory infections (LRIs) and corresponding risk factors in children older than 5 years and adults has not been studied as comprehensively as it has been in children younger than 5 years. We assessed the burden and trends of LRIs and risk factors across all age groups by sex, for 204 countries and territor...
Article
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The United Nations specified the need for “providing universal access to greenspace for urban residents” in the 11th Sustainable Development Goal. Yet, how far we are from this goal remains unclear. Here, we develop a methodology incorporating fine-resolution population and greenspace mappings and use the results for 2020 to elucidate global differ...
Article
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Background The health risks associated with moderate alcohol consumption continue to be debated. Small amounts of alcohol might lower the risk of some health outcomes but increase the risk of others, suggesting that the overall risk depends, in part, on background disease rates, which vary by region, age, sex, and year. Methods For this analysis,...
Article
With the ongoing spread of COVID-19, vaccination stands as an effective measure to control and mitigate the impact of the disease. However, due to the unequal distribution of COVID-19 vaccination sites, people can have different levels of spatial accessibility to COVID-19 vaccination. This study adopts an improved gravity-based model to measure the...
Article
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Greenspace exposure metrics can allow for comparisons of green space supply across time, space, and population groups, and for inferring patterns of variation in opportunities for people to enjoy the health and recreational benefits of nearby green environments. A better understanding of greenspace exposure differences across various spatial scales...
Article
Background: Built environment can influence physical conditions of older adults (e.g. osteoporosis). However, traditional methods using 2-dimensional circular buffer as a spatial structure to measure neighbourhood effect may create bias in health estimation, especially for the hilly and compact environment across low-income neighbourhoods (e.g. pub...
Article
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The influence of high-density environment on urban residents is controversial, and its effect varies with specific contexts. Meanwhile, urban planners and policy-makers are increasingly aware that urban greenery may mitigate the detrimental effects of crowded environments on quality of life in high-density cities. However, little empirical evidence...
Article
Inequalities in accessibility to grocery stores can lead to disparate health outcomes among the population. Although existing studies have examined grocery accessibility inequality across income and racial/ethnic groups, little research has been dedicated to revealing the intra‐racial disparities of grocery accessibility and comparing inter‐racial...
Article
Public transit is the main travel mode for residents in major urban areas to access different socioeconomic resources. Nodal accessibility can be used to measure the level of transit-based connectivity for residents from one neighborhood to socioeconomic resources in other neighborhoods. While many existing studies have measured the spatial inequal...
Chapter
Urban greenspace, as an essential component of green infrastructure, is particularly important in the urban environment that maintains the function and sustainability of urbanities. With the rapid economic growth over recent decades, China has been experiencing unprecedented urbanisation processes, at the same time, led to dramatic changes in urban...
Article
Objectives: Maintaining good cognition is crucial in later life. However, most existing research has focused on individual factors impacting cognition, and few studies have investigated the association between neighborhood built environment and older adults' cognition. This study examined the association between neighborhood built environment and c...
Preprint
Full-text available
The United Nations specified the need for “providing universal access to greenspace for urban residents” in the 11th Sustainable Development Goal. Yet, how far we are from this goal remains unclear in the global context. Here, we developed a methodology incorporating fine-resolution population and greenspace mappings and used the results for 2020 t...
Article
Background Recent research attention has been paid to anthropogenic heat emissions (AE), temperature increase generated by human activity such as lighting, transportation, manufacturing, construction, and building climate controls. However, there is no epidemiological data available to investigate the association between anthropogenic heat emission...
Article
Full-text available
Given the important role of green environments playing in healthy cities, the inequality in urban greenspace exposure has aroused growing attentions. However, few comparative studies are available to quantify this phenomenon for cities with different population sizes across a country, especially for those in the developing world. Besides, commonly...
Article
Full-text available
Background Emerging research suggested an association of early-life particulate air pollution exposure with development of asthma in childhood. However, the potentially differential effects of submicron particulate matter (PM; PM with aerodynamic diameter ≤1 μm [PM1]) remain largely unknown. Objective This study primarily aimed to investigate asso...
Article
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Exposure to ambient PM 2.5 (fine particulate matter) can cause adverse effects on human health. China has been experiencing dramatic changes in air pollution over the past two decades. Statistically deriving ground-level PM 2.5 from satellite aerosol optical depth (AOD) has been an emerging attempt to provide such PM 2.5 data for environmental moni...
Article
Full-text available
Urban land-use maps outlining the distribution, pattern, and composition of various land use types are critically important for urban planning, environmental management, disaster control, health protection, and biodiversity conservation. Recent advances in remote sensing and social sensing data and methods have shown great potentials in mapping urb...
Article
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Background Knowledge of how intrinsic capacity (IC) and neighbourhood physical environment shape functional ability (FA) trajectories in later life remains understudied. We investigated four-year trajectories of IC and their impact on FA trajectories and the association between neighbourhood physical environment and FA trajectories among community-...
Article
Background Smaller sizes of ambient particulate matter (PM) can be more toxic and can be breathed into lower lobes of a lung. Children are particularly vulnerable to PM air pollution because of their adverse effects on both lung functions and lung development. However, it remains unknown whether a smaller PM has a greater short-term impact on child...
Article
Little is known about the accumulative impacts of neighbourhood physical environments on older adults' depressive symptoms over time. Based on a cohort study of 2081 older adults in Hong Kong, this study examined longitudinal relationships between neighbourhood physical environments and depressive symptoms among older adults, with a particular focu...
Article
Full-text available
Real-time population data are vital for urban planning and resource management for sustainable development. To complement satellite-based population estimation methods, geospatial social media data provide additional opportunities to estimate the distribution of population with high levels of efficacy and accuracy. Thus, this study attempts to asse...
Article
Sensing urban greenness from street view data offers a new and alternative way of measuring the association between greenness exposure and subjective wellbeing in developing countries where traditional census data are poor. This paper focuses on the association between life satisfaction and street-level visible greenness exposure at residential and...
Preprint
Knowledge on how intrinsic capacity (IC) and neighbourhood physical environment shape functional ability (FA) trajectories in later life remains understudied. We investigated the 4-year trajectories of IC and their impact on FA trajectories, and the associations between neighbourhood physical environments and FA trajectories over time among older a...
Article
Full-text available
Urban spatial structure, which is primarily defined as the spatial distribution of employment and residences, has been of lasting interest to urban economists, geographers, and planners for good reason. This paper proposes a nonparametric method that combines the Jenks natural break method and the Moran's I to identify a city's polycentric structur...
Article
Neighborhood built environments (BEs) are increasingly recognized as being associated with late-life depression. However, their pathways are still understudied. This study investigates the mediating effects of physical, social activities (PA & SA) and functional ability (FA) in the relationships between BEs and late-life depression. We conducted a...
Article
Background: It remains uncertain whether socioeconomic factors modify the effect of air pollution on human health. Moreover, studies investigating socioeconomic modifying roles on the effect of PM1 are quite limited, especially in developing countries. Objective: The present study aims to investigate socioeconomic modification effects on the associ...