Environmental open-source data sets and sleep-wake rhythms of populations: an overview

Abstract Objective/Background In recent decades, the epidemiology of sleep disorders has mainly consisted of interviewing subjects through validated questionnaires; more recently, this has been done by assessing total sleep time (TST) per 24 hours via sleep logs or connected devices. Thus, a vast amount of data has helped demonstrate the decline of TST in most countries. Nonetheless, we believe from a societal and environmental point of view that sleep researchers have largely overlooked a wide-open field of data that may help us to better understand and describe global sleep wake rhythms (SWR), eg, data regarding the sleep environment. Methods Based on recent literature, we identified several environmental and societal fields that may have an effect on SWR. With the help of an expert panel, we selected the five most pertinent fields with multiple open-source data sets that may have an impact on human SWR. Then, we performed web-based research and proposed open-field data sets for each field, all of which are open to researchers and possibly scientifically associated with SWR. Results The open fields relevant to the environment that we selected were noise, light pollution, and radio frequencies. The two societal fields were transportation and internet use. The evolution of most of these fields in recent decades may explain (even partially) the decline in TST. Importantly, the open data sets in each field are widely available to sleep researchers. Conclusions SWR must be assessed not only by patient accounts, but also in terms of the evolution of environmental cues.