Scientists at UC San Diego have developed a physical activity and location measurement system (PALMS) comprised of an integrated suite of hardware and software that supports real-time capture and subsequent analyses of data on physical activity and energy expenditure (PAEE) from a geospatial perspective. This new technology provides the capability for ecological momentary assessment (EMA) of psychosocial factors related to PAEE context. These objective measures provide significant advantages over the standard methodology that was limited to subject self-reporting.

PALMS is a web-based software system that supports researchers in the development of tools that would advance PA measurement. The PALMS software architecture is a highly scalable distributed computing platform composed of a PC-based browser component and a collection of Internet-based servers. PALMS’ core functionality is implemented in the so-called PALMS server component, which is organized according to principles of rich services, a variant of service-oriented architecture (SOA). As such, it provides services that allow researchers to define new studies related to behavioral assessment and intervention and register new data collection devices (such as accelerometers and GPS units) and calculations (such as spatial/temporal analyses). Once the intervention is defined, it allows researchers to associate particular data collection devices and calculations with the study; upload and track observation data; define reusable, parameter driven calculation protocols; and organize, view, and export calculation results. PALMS’ user interface functionality is implemented in the PALMS browser, which is a rich, web-based graphical user interface (GUI) that coordinates with the PALMS Server to enable administration of and access to PALMS studies, and enables viewing of observation data and calculation results both locally and through external packages, such as SPSS and ArcGIS.

An important consequence of PALMS’ flexibility and ease of use is the ability to generate and retain multiple datasets and calculation results over time. To enable researchers to track, organize, and share their work, PALMS provides curation facilities (which store annotations and comments) and provenance facilities (which track lineage and derivation histories). By construction, the PALMS system provides facilities tailor-made to support the needs of geospatial/temporal PA research in a collaboration-oriented community, including enterprise-class facilities for data storage, retrieval, and backup; scalable calculations; and collaboration facilities that support opportunistic sharing and discovery.

File Number: 22228 

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