A mobile sensing approach to stress detection and memory activation for public bus drivers

Abstract

The experience of daily stress among bus drivers hasshown to affect physical and psychological health, and can impactdriving behavior and overall road safety. Although previousresearch consistently supports these findings, little attention hasbeen dedicated to the design of a stress detection method ableto synchronize physiological and psychological stress responses ofpublic bus drivers in their day-to-day routine work. To overcomethis limitation, we propose a mobile sensing approach to detectgeoreferenced stress responses and facilitate memory recall ofthe stressful situations. Data were collected among public busdrivers in the city of Porto, Portugal (145 h, 36 bus drivers,+2300 km), and results supported the validation of our approachamong this population and allowed us to determine specific stressorcategories within certain areas of the city. Furthermore, datacollected throughout the city allowed us to produce a citywide"stress map" that can be used for spotting areas in need of localauthority intervention. The enriching findings suggest that oursystem can be a promising tool to support applied occupationalhealth interventions for public bus drivers and guide authorities'interventions to improve these aspects in "future" cities