Dallas City Wire

Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas analyzed data from many sources, including mobile applications to measure and determine how prevalent food deserts are across the country, and particularly in urban areas. The results, published in Frontiers in Public Health on March 6, found the data for possible food deserts in Dallas were incomplete.

A food desert is a neighborhood lacking access to food. Since the 1990s it has been an indicator of food insecurity in neighborhoods, according to governmental agencies. The authors of the paper,  “Crowdsourced Mapping for Healthy Food Accessibility in Dallas, Texas: A Feasibility Study,” were Thomas McKey, Dhyeong Kim, and SungChul Seo. They looked at these apps and other data to develop a supplement to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's infrequently released USDA Food Access Research Atlas.

Access to good food helps to keep people healthy and reduce the development of chronic diseases. Those disparities have been documented, although governments at the local and national levels have been unable to address what creates food desserts in an adequate way.

The study used information from Yelp to identify businesses as commercially available data sources, the report says. The problem is that Yelp offers limited information because it is not everywhere. Researchers were able to identify more census tracts as food deserts in the southern part of Dallas, but not all grocery stores are listed in Yelp, due to an absence of user-generated content, the authors said.

“The findings of this study cannot confirm which dataset [USDA vs. Yelp] matches the real world more accurately due to the time difference between the two data sources, but could show the potential of the crowdsourced georeferenced data which are free and readily available for routine mapping,” the authors wrote. “In this regard, Yelp data may be used to track ongoing efforts of addressing healthy food access with more frequency when a large-scale primary data collection is not possible. 

"To sum up, Yelp data is still incomplete in coverage and limited for wide application but has potential to be improved in the near future as crowdsourcing technology and platforms rapidly evolve.”

The authors suggest strategies that are specific to different locations, ones that rely more on local area sources. The researchers suggest the work be done in cities nationwide to guide future food desert studies and other public health mapping.