MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort
Record W4415439686 · doi:10.1101/2025.10.19.25338326

popexposure: An open-source Python package to find the number of people residing near environmental hazards quickly and efficiently

2025· preprint· en· W4415439686 on OpenAlexfundno aff
Heather McBrien, Joan A. Casey, Lawrence Chillrud, Nina M. Flores, Lauren B. Wilner

Bibliographic record

VenuemedRxiv · 2025
Typepreprint
Languageen
FieldDecision Sciences
Topicdemographic modeling and climate adaptation
Canadian institutionsnot available
FundersCanadian Institutes of Health ResearchNational Science Foundation
KeywordsHazardCensusPython (programming language)PopulationHazard mapEnvironmental hazardGeographic information systemEnvironmental data

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract Environmental scientists often assess exposure to hazards using residential proximity (i.e., they consider an individual living near a hazard to be exposed). Such assessment requires large, fine-scale spatial datasets that describe locations of environmental hazards and residential populations. Manipulating such datasets is technically demanding, slow, memory-intensive, and difficult to optimize for speed and memory use. Currently, individual research teams each write their own algorithms for this task. This may lead to inconsistencies in assumptions, methods, and results. We developed an open-source Python package, popexposure , which quickly, efficiently, and consistently estimates the number of people living near environmental hazards. Given a set of distinct hazard geometries and corresponding buffer distances, popexposure can estimate the number of people living within the buffered area of each hazard using a gridded population dataset. popexposure can also estimate the number of people living within the buffer distance of each hazard by additional administrative geographies. For example, users can calculate the number of people exposed to hazards in each census tract or zip code tabulation area (ZCTA). popexposure addresses common issues encountered in this calculation: whether or not to double-count people exposed to more than one hazard, proper pixel apportionment, choosing appropriate map projections for data covering large areas, and optimizing speed and memory. In this paper, we describe popexposure ’s functionality and provide an example use case, calculating the proportion of people exposed to any wildfire burn zone disaster in California in 2018 in each ZCTA. What this study adds Environmental epidemiologists often assess exposure to hazards using residential proximity (i.e., they consider an individual exposed if they live near a hazard). This computation presents technical difficulties, and different research teams each apply their own solution, since no software currently exists to do this task. We developed an open-source Python package, popexposure , which quickly, efficiently, and consistently estimates the number of people living near environmental hazards. Here, we describe the package and provide an example use case, applying popexposure to compute the proportion of people exposed to any wildfire burn zone disaster in California in 2018 in each ZCTA.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.008
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: Not applicable
GenreCandidate signal: Software · Consensus signal: Software
Teacher disagreement score0.036
Threshold uncertainty score0.120

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.008
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0020.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.003
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0010.001
Scholarly communication0.0020.003
Open science0.0030.004
Research integrity0.0010.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0360.024

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.062
GPT teacher head0.368
Teacher spread0.306 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designNot applicable
Domainnot available
GenreSoftware

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venuemedRxivSame topicdemographic modeling and climate adaptationFrench-language works237,207