Periodic Reporting for period 1 - URBANOME (Urban Observatory for Multi-participatory Enhancement of Health and Wellbeing)
Reporting period: 2021-03-01 to 2022-08-31
What is the problem/issue being addressed?
Rising urbanisation and longer life expectancy of the population, makes cities face complex health challenges that are often linked to environmental challenges and interact with the increasingly sedentary lifestyles of urban populations. Concurrently, social inequality and inequity across urban areas increases in European cities accentuating differences in health and wellbeing among population subgroups. URBANOME seeks to enhance evidence-based knowledge on how environmental quality, consumer choice, lifestyle, and socio-economic status affect health and wellbeing for particular groups across the EU and how this is determined by a number of city specific characteristics, including biophysical, social, operational, political and structural and local culture and effectiveness of governance systems.
Why is it important for the society?
URBANOME aims to identify interventions, potential investments and innovations in the urban environment towards a green, climate-neutral and smart economy to improve urban health and wellbeing as well as the quality of environment; it strives to do so with enhanced societal participation and citizen engagement. Integrating socio-economic dynamics and population vulnerability in its analytical framework URBANOME promotes social cohesion and equality, as well as inclusiveness and cost-effectiveness in environmental management, leading hopefully to more resilient, healthy, and equitable cities.
What are the overall objectives?
The overall objective of URBANOME is to promote urban health, wellbeing, and liveability, through systematically integrating health concerns in urban policies and the activities of urban citizens, on the basis of detailed and comprehensive evidence on environmental health determinants, the spatial distribution of these in the city, and the social distribution of their impact among different population groups, accounting for different lifestyles and behaviours.
Rising urbanisation and longer life expectancy of the population, makes cities face complex health challenges that are often linked to environmental challenges and interact with the increasingly sedentary lifestyles of urban populations. Concurrently, social inequality and inequity across urban areas increases in European cities accentuating differences in health and wellbeing among population subgroups. URBANOME seeks to enhance evidence-based knowledge on how environmental quality, consumer choice, lifestyle, and socio-economic status affect health and wellbeing for particular groups across the EU and how this is determined by a number of city specific characteristics, including biophysical, social, operational, political and structural and local culture and effectiveness of governance systems.
Why is it important for the society?
URBANOME aims to identify interventions, potential investments and innovations in the urban environment towards a green, climate-neutral and smart economy to improve urban health and wellbeing as well as the quality of environment; it strives to do so with enhanced societal participation and citizen engagement. Integrating socio-economic dynamics and population vulnerability in its analytical framework URBANOME promotes social cohesion and equality, as well as inclusiveness and cost-effectiveness in environmental management, leading hopefully to more resilient, healthy, and equitable cities.
What are the overall objectives?
The overall objective of URBANOME is to promote urban health, wellbeing, and liveability, through systematically integrating health concerns in urban policies and the activities of urban citizens, on the basis of detailed and comprehensive evidence on environmental health determinants, the spatial distribution of these in the city, and the social distribution of their impact among different population groups, accounting for different lifestyles and behaviours.
To address the questions addressed by URBANOME, a methodological approach is developed to evaluate the efficacy of interventions that aim at the enhancement of urban health and wellbeing (Fig. 1). The URBANOME paradigm includes advanced big data analytics including high dimensional data fusion and refined tools are used for environmental and health impact assessment. Interventions are co-designed using a participatory approach, with stakeholders representing the quadruple helix, in nine European Urban Living Labs (ULLs) encapsulating different urban characteristics.
To support the development of the URBANOME approach several state-of-the-art reviews shedding light on different project aspects have been conducted based on a common protocol; external input has been collected, through scientific and stakeholder meetings organized in the frame of the Digital Living Lab Days in September 2021. Several scientific meetings have been organised since, feeding the development of the overall approach, and disseminating our first results.
The 9 ULLs are established; good practices and guidelines have been put forward; local stakeholders representing the quadruple helix have been mapped; training on the living lab methodology and on sustainable governance models has been provided. Co-design workshops organized by the ULLs, have helped us define potential interventions on the individual and urban scale.
The functional specifications of the multi-modal information fusion architecture are defined, and a deep learning model is developed and tested in Athens and Thessaloniki; its aim is to predict exposure of various population subgroups to different classes of particulate matter.
Preliminary ‘rules’ for the URBANOME Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) platform are created and an agent-based model for the city of Thessaloniki is developed and is currently being tested.
The URBANOME personal exposure campaign protocol is completed, and recruitment of participants has started in Montpellier and Thessaloniki. A tiered modelling framework to quantitatively estimate health effects for all pollutants addressed by URBANOME has been developed.
The URBANOME methodology has been presented in international conferences; connections with relevant EU projects have been established; the White Tower Forum on urban health and sustainability has been established as a series of annual international events bringing together the quadruple helix components to discuss and seek operational solutions to health and sustainability challenges in the European cityscape; newsletters have been published on the project web portal (http://www.URBANOME.eu). Overall, project methodology, tools and results have been presented in over 15 conferences and workshops. Six scientific abstracts have been published in conference proceedings. Around 40 meetings and workshops have been organised locally in the frame of the ULLs.
To support the development of the URBANOME approach several state-of-the-art reviews shedding light on different project aspects have been conducted based on a common protocol; external input has been collected, through scientific and stakeholder meetings organized in the frame of the Digital Living Lab Days in September 2021. Several scientific meetings have been organised since, feeding the development of the overall approach, and disseminating our first results.
The 9 ULLs are established; good practices and guidelines have been put forward; local stakeholders representing the quadruple helix have been mapped; training on the living lab methodology and on sustainable governance models has been provided. Co-design workshops organized by the ULLs, have helped us define potential interventions on the individual and urban scale.
The functional specifications of the multi-modal information fusion architecture are defined, and a deep learning model is developed and tested in Athens and Thessaloniki; its aim is to predict exposure of various population subgroups to different classes of particulate matter.
Preliminary ‘rules’ for the URBANOME Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) platform are created and an agent-based model for the city of Thessaloniki is developed and is currently being tested.
The URBANOME personal exposure campaign protocol is completed, and recruitment of participants has started in Montpellier and Thessaloniki. A tiered modelling framework to quantitatively estimate health effects for all pollutants addressed by URBANOME has been developed.
The URBANOME methodology has been presented in international conferences; connections with relevant EU projects have been established; the White Tower Forum on urban health and sustainability has been established as a series of annual international events bringing together the quadruple helix components to discuss and seek operational solutions to health and sustainability challenges in the European cityscape; newsletters have been published on the project web portal (http://www.URBANOME.eu). Overall, project methodology, tools and results have been presented in over 15 conferences and workshops. Six scientific abstracts have been published in conference proceedings. Around 40 meetings and workshops have been organised locally in the frame of the ULLs.
Key progress beyond the state of the art and expected results include:
• Innovative forms of participation of urban citizens in co-creative policy making and planning through data collection via sensor campaigns and through involvement in adaptive governance activities promoting wellbeing health aspects of sectors such as urban greening and sustainable urban transport, thus moving from awareness to engagement and changing citizens practices
• Flexible procedures for actual policy integration of health concerns across relevant policy sectors, reflected in policy approaches and instruments adapted to the implementation context, including the behaviours and practices of multiple urban populations, in specific cities
• Use of machine learning approaches such as Agent-Based Models informed from wearable technology sensors to capture individual spatio-temporal behaviours for assessing individual exposure considering the social dynamics that modulate policy outcomes
• Methods for total exposure assessment and approaches for estimating health effects at the individual and community level
• A novel computational paradigm for integrating personalised exposure modeling to urban pollution, prediction of early physical and mood/mental disorders, deterioration of functional capacity and robust ways to preserve physical and mental well-being through digital intervention
• Use of cross-omics platforms to identify early onset of non-communicable diseases related to exposure to environmental stressors
URBANOME is expected to have a positive impact on local society and the economy contributing to more cost-effective environmental health and wellbeing management by prioritizing tangible interventions with the maximum benefit:investment ratio, enhanced urban resilience and reduced costs associated to the health burden from environmental stressors encompassing citizen behavioural change and finally mitigating social inequality and enhance social cohesion and inclusion.
What sets it apart is the quest to integrate advanced biomarker and clinical data with ethnographic approaches and citizen science through urban and individual-scale interventions that are geared to bring tangible benefits in terms of urban health and well-being in 9 cities across Europe. These cities (Fig. 2) are chosen to represent very different urban realities so that the project outcomes can be applicable throughout the EU. Innovative ways to induce citizen engagement will result into novel models for participatory urban governance focusing on enhanced urban health and sustainability.
• Innovative forms of participation of urban citizens in co-creative policy making and planning through data collection via sensor campaigns and through involvement in adaptive governance activities promoting wellbeing health aspects of sectors such as urban greening and sustainable urban transport, thus moving from awareness to engagement and changing citizens practices
• Flexible procedures for actual policy integration of health concerns across relevant policy sectors, reflected in policy approaches and instruments adapted to the implementation context, including the behaviours and practices of multiple urban populations, in specific cities
• Use of machine learning approaches such as Agent-Based Models informed from wearable technology sensors to capture individual spatio-temporal behaviours for assessing individual exposure considering the social dynamics that modulate policy outcomes
• Methods for total exposure assessment and approaches for estimating health effects at the individual and community level
• A novel computational paradigm for integrating personalised exposure modeling to urban pollution, prediction of early physical and mood/mental disorders, deterioration of functional capacity and robust ways to preserve physical and mental well-being through digital intervention
• Use of cross-omics platforms to identify early onset of non-communicable diseases related to exposure to environmental stressors
URBANOME is expected to have a positive impact on local society and the economy contributing to more cost-effective environmental health and wellbeing management by prioritizing tangible interventions with the maximum benefit:investment ratio, enhanced urban resilience and reduced costs associated to the health burden from environmental stressors encompassing citizen behavioural change and finally mitigating social inequality and enhance social cohesion and inclusion.
What sets it apart is the quest to integrate advanced biomarker and clinical data with ethnographic approaches and citizen science through urban and individual-scale interventions that are geared to bring tangible benefits in terms of urban health and well-being in 9 cities across Europe. These cities (Fig. 2) are chosen to represent very different urban realities so that the project outcomes can be applicable throughout the EU. Innovative ways to induce citizen engagement will result into novel models for participatory urban governance focusing on enhanced urban health and sustainability.