Dusk2Dawn

The project brings together a team specialized in computer science, addiction science, and human geography. Using a multidisciplinary research approach and rich data gathered by young volunteers using smartphones, the project aims to provide answers to a number of important questions related to the night behavior of young Swiss people. These responses have value for scientific research but also practical relevance for city and public health officials.

Drawing on a first collaboration that produced data on the night behavior of young people in Switzerland (smartphone data, drinks photos, location videos and interviews), the project has three objectives:

1. Understanding the role of private spaces in young people's nightlife, identifying the features that characterize nocturnal habits.
2. Inferring nightlife activities based on sensor and video data and machine learning; and dynamically characterizing popular areas according to human nighttime behavior with additional social media and urban data sources.
3. Studying the attributes of beverages in different contexts, including the accuracy of self-reported alcohol consumption, and the ability to infer attributes of physical environments from the characteristics of photos.

Our team has defined an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the intersection of nightlife and young people in Switzerland. Beyond research, our project intends to have a broader impact by transferring the knowledge generated by the project to city and public health officials.

The project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) through the Sinergia interdisciplinary program.