Environmental observations solutions contributing to meeting “One Health” challenges
The general scope of this topic is to explore areas of the One Health policy that would benefit from the use of environmental observation and how environmental observations can be used for further shaping policies in the context of e.g. human health, animal health (including zoonoses) and plant health.
The proposal should build on the holistic integrative concept of ‘One Health’ that includes not only the health of humans, but also of animals, soil and plants including ecosystems and environmental health. Information deriving from environmental observation combined with health data over the broad range of the One Health concept should be delivered through an integrated approach aggregating all the components of the One Health with the intention to support related policies within the health area in a comprehensive way.
A specific focus of the proposal should be on the monitoring of the evolution of ecosystem barriers in densely populated, industrialised or agricultural areas. The proposal should also investigate how environmental observations could provide information that can contribute to improving the effectiveness, sustainability and resilience of these ecosystem barriers in facing emerging diseases. The proposal should include the reanalysis of long time series of environmental observations and their correlation with the emergence or spread of diseases.
It should also work on the concept of alert or early warning systems based on observation that would contribute informing governments and authorities, and finally operators, on the health risks related to the destruction of ecosystems and biodiversity with a One Health approach, including a consideration of disease hazards, human (or animal) exposure and vulnerability. Research on the risk for human health and ecosystems of new contaminants could help early detection and reduce negative effects within the One Health domain. A particular area of interest in this context is the follow up to the EIC Horizon Prize on Early Warning for Epidemics[[https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/wp/2018-2020/main/h2020-wp1820-eic_en.pdf]] and how the insights gained from the outcomes of the prize could be further developed.
Links to the European Earth observation programme Copernicus, the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), and the EU satellite navigation programme (EGNSS) are relevant and expected.