Commentary: A road map for future data-driven urban planning and environmental health research
Large‑scale urban datasets help reveal how city form, climate, mobility and exposure interact to drive pollution, heat, noise and green‑space deficits. Harmonizing data across hundreds of cities is essential for identifying effective disease‑prevention strategies and understanding context‑specific policy needs.
Subject Tags
- Data Science and Artificial Intelligence
- Health
- Social Sciences
Abstract
Recent advances in data science and urban environmental health research utilise large-scale databases (100s–1000s of cities) to explore the complex interplay of urban characteristics such as city form and size, climate, mobility, exposure, and environmental health impacts. Cities are still hotspots of air pollution and noise, suffer urban heat island effects and lack of green space, which leads to disease and mortality burdens preventable with better knowledge. Better understanding through harmonising and analysing data in large numbers of cities is essential to identifying the most effective means of disease prevention and understanding context dependencies important for policy.
Citation
Dyer, G.M., Khomenko, S., Adlakha, D., Anenberg, S., Angelova, J., Behnisch, M., Boeing, G., Chen, X., Cirach, M., De Hoogh, K. and Roux, A.V.D., 2024. Commentary: A road map for future data-driven urban planning and environmental health research. Cities, 155, p.105340. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2024.105340
TNC Authors
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Robert McDonald
Lead Scientist for Nature-Based Solutions and Lead Scientist for Europe
The Nature Conservancy
Email: rob_mcdonald@tnc.org