Periodic Reporting for period 1 - OneAquaHealth (Protecting urban aquatic ecosystems to promote One Health)
Période du rapport: 2023-01-01 au 2024-06-30
Aquatic urban ecosystems are extremely relevant connectors between people, animals and plants and provide a valuable resource to liaise health and environmental observations with a potential impact on prediction and prevention. In urbanized areas, aquatic ecosystems constitute ecological corridors between fragmented natural areas supporting a wide biodiversity and variety of ecosystem services, improving the sustainability of cities. Yet, these ecosystems are often degraded by lack of space, cuts of riparian vegetation, artificialization of the channels, impervious areas in the margins, water pollution, noise, excessive lights, among others. This degradation can lead to numerous disservices to human populations, and increase the probability of the emergence of pathogens, lower disease resistance of wildlife and humans, increasing the probability of disease severity and diseases associated with reduced physical activity and permanence in stressful environments found in cities.
In view of this, OneAquaHealth aims to demonstrate that the health of freshwater ecosystems and human health and wellbeing in urban contexts are highly interconnected as improving one results in the improvement of the other, reestablishing the balance between nature and humans. To this aim, OneAquaHealth promotes the environmental monitoring of early warning indicators that can assess that balance. It will provide decision-makers with a AI-based Environmental Surveillance System able to support adequate and timely decisions and providing effective recovery measures of aquatic ecosystems health (and consequently human health) adequate for different scenarios, including climate changes.
OneAquaHealth involves all relevant stakeholders in the process raising their awareness to the importance of urban streams and rivers and supporting them with adequate digital tools to guarantee environmental monitoring beyond the project duration.
OneAquaHealth collects new information to fill knowledge gaps in 5 cities located across Europe and covering a climatic, environmental and sociocultural gradient. In each city 20 urban stream sites are studies, totalizing 100 streams covering urbanization gradients.
In view of this, OneAquaHealth aims to demonstrate that the health of freshwater ecosystems and human health and wellbeing in urban contexts are highly interconnected as improving one results in the improvement of the other, reestablishing the balance between nature and humans. To this aim, OneAquaHealth promotes the environmental monitoring of early warning indicators that can assess that balance. It will provide decision-makers with a AI-based Environmental Surveillance System able to support adequate and timely decisions and providing effective recovery measures of aquatic ecosystems health (and consequently human health) adequate for different scenarios, including climate changes.
OneAquaHealth involves all relevant stakeholders in the process raising their awareness to the importance of urban streams and rivers and supporting them with adequate digital tools to guarantee environmental monitoring beyond the project duration.
OneAquaHealth collects new information to fill knowledge gaps in 5 cities located across Europe and covering a climatic, environmental and sociocultural gradient. In each city 20 urban stream sites are studies, totalizing 100 streams covering urbanization gradients.
The most relevant work performed and main achievements of OneAquaHealth at M18 are:
- Establishment of the OneAquaHealth Open Information Hub with an appealing front-end design to target all project stakeholders, providing a centralized, searchable online space for various knowledge sources.
- A preliminary list of indicators of One Health risks associated with the degradation of urban freshwater ecosystem (29 indicators and 70 indices and metrics)
- The establishment of a network of 100 monitoring urban freshwater ecosystems at the 5 Research sites: Coimbra (Portugal), Toulouse (France), Benevento (Italy), Gent (Belgium), and Oslo (Norway), representing a diversity of climatic, environmental and socio-cultural conditions and levels of urbanization.
- Field campaigns to collect new data at the selected 100 urban streams of the following key ecosystem and biological health indicators: Aquatic benthic macroinvertebrates, diatoms (microalgae) and plant communities, and fish; Microbiomes; Mosquitoes and other adults of Diptera; Birds; Amphibians; Hydromorphological parameters; Water physico-chemical parameters, including nutrients, pharmaceuticals and other pollutants
- Preliminary processing of the samples in the lab (e.g. taxonomic identification of species or chemical analyses) and preliminary data analyses
- First list of public and personal health indicators extracted from literature
- Creation and use of so-called Local Alliances in the 5 Research sites composed of the major local stakeholders from different types of organisations (i.e. Civil Society, Government, Industry, Academia, and Environment).
- Participatory research studies conducted in the 5 Research sites to collect citizens’ perspectives and an assessment on needs and analysis of contextual, social and cultural determinants influencing citizens' interactions with urban blue spaces
- A Citizen Science Protocol that provides a structured approach to citizen science activities, with a set of guidelines and recommendations for participant recruitment, training, data collection, reporting and quality assurance, and communication
- Development of One Aqua Health Geospatial and Satellite Information services. Requirements and features of the Geospatial and Satellite Information Platform, integrated with the Data Backoffice to form GEOSSIP, were defined. The Geospatial and Satellite Information analysis involved annotating all monitored water streams at Research sites and developing Earth Observation analytics for vegetation and water indices. These resources and analytics are available through GEOSSIP.
- Development of a data backoffice and the Citizen Science App as a Progressive Web Application (PWA). The first version of the GEOSSIP platform is live.
- Elaboration of an exploitation plan (two versions already submitted).
- Development of the first version of a liaison and clustering strategy and initial implementation.
- Establishment of the OneAquaHealth Open Information Hub with an appealing front-end design to target all project stakeholders, providing a centralized, searchable online space for various knowledge sources.
- A preliminary list of indicators of One Health risks associated with the degradation of urban freshwater ecosystem (29 indicators and 70 indices and metrics)
- The establishment of a network of 100 monitoring urban freshwater ecosystems at the 5 Research sites: Coimbra (Portugal), Toulouse (France), Benevento (Italy), Gent (Belgium), and Oslo (Norway), representing a diversity of climatic, environmental and socio-cultural conditions and levels of urbanization.
- Field campaigns to collect new data at the selected 100 urban streams of the following key ecosystem and biological health indicators: Aquatic benthic macroinvertebrates, diatoms (microalgae) and plant communities, and fish; Microbiomes; Mosquitoes and other adults of Diptera; Birds; Amphibians; Hydromorphological parameters; Water physico-chemical parameters, including nutrients, pharmaceuticals and other pollutants
- Preliminary processing of the samples in the lab (e.g. taxonomic identification of species or chemical analyses) and preliminary data analyses
- First list of public and personal health indicators extracted from literature
- Creation and use of so-called Local Alliances in the 5 Research sites composed of the major local stakeholders from different types of organisations (i.e. Civil Society, Government, Industry, Academia, and Environment).
- Participatory research studies conducted in the 5 Research sites to collect citizens’ perspectives and an assessment on needs and analysis of contextual, social and cultural determinants influencing citizens' interactions with urban blue spaces
- A Citizen Science Protocol that provides a structured approach to citizen science activities, with a set of guidelines and recommendations for participant recruitment, training, data collection, reporting and quality assurance, and communication
- Development of One Aqua Health Geospatial and Satellite Information services. Requirements and features of the Geospatial and Satellite Information Platform, integrated with the Data Backoffice to form GEOSSIP, were defined. The Geospatial and Satellite Information analysis involved annotating all monitored water streams at Research sites and developing Earth Observation analytics for vegetation and water indices. These resources and analytics are available through GEOSSIP.
- Development of a data backoffice and the Citizen Science App as a Progressive Web Application (PWA). The first version of the GEOSSIP platform is live.
- Elaboration of an exploitation plan (two versions already submitted).
- Development of the first version of a liaison and clustering strategy and initial implementation.
OneAquaHealth is advancing the current state of the art by:
1. Lining up environmental and Earth observation approaches to conduct OneHealth monitoring in urban areas.
2. Developing novel AI-based assessment tools to allow the assessment of the status of urban aquatic ecosystems.
3. Assessing and making explicit the health benefits from healthy urban aquatic ecosystems
4. Empowering citizens and communities to discuss human rights and human duties towards an ethical OneHealth sustainability.
5. Developing a common and standardised early warning Environmental Surveillance System for urban aquatic ecosystems applicable in all Member States deploying the One Digital Health approach.
At M18 all these are in good progress.
1. Lining up environmental and Earth observation approaches to conduct OneHealth monitoring in urban areas.
2. Developing novel AI-based assessment tools to allow the assessment of the status of urban aquatic ecosystems.
3. Assessing and making explicit the health benefits from healthy urban aquatic ecosystems
4. Empowering citizens and communities to discuss human rights and human duties towards an ethical OneHealth sustainability.
5. Developing a common and standardised early warning Environmental Surveillance System for urban aquatic ecosystems applicable in all Member States deploying the One Digital Health approach.
At M18 all these are in good progress.