GEOSS 10-Year Plan Reference Document

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Doc #: 46 Title: GEOSS 10-Year Plan Reference Document | Document Link
Organization/Author: GEO
Type: Report
Year:
Region: International
Observation Type:
Observation Needs:
Document Status: Unsubmitted, 2009/08/31
Parameters:

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Description of Document:
Pg. 42

• Health service providers, researchers, policy makers, and the public in developed and developing countries as well as indigenous communities need such data products for providing the services,science, and decisions that affect human health and well-being.

Pg. 43

• GEOSS will be a vital means of bringing useful environmental data to the health community in a user friendly form. Comprehensive data sets are powerful tools that support prevention, early warning, research, epidemiology, health care planning and delivery, and provide a variety of timely public alerts. For example, by linking weather, air quality data and the urban heat island effects, air quality forecasts can help protect asthmatics, the elderly and the young from cardiovascular and respiratory problems resulting from air pollution episodes. These data can also provide linkages to longer-term air quality impacts such as cancers, respiratory diseases, asthma and birth defects.

• It will be achieved through the development of a system of in situ, airborne, and space-based systems integrated through assimilation and modelling tools with census data on health, and

• Currently, the work being conducted with remote sensing technologies and disease is through interdisciplinary research groups involving scientists with varied backgrounds such as remote sensing, epidemiologists, and atmospheric scientists (e.g. the international ESSP). The science of epidemiology involves observing factors that might be associated with disease, and then calculating the degree of significance in the association. The true value of Earth Observation data will become more fully realized when simple, user-friendly data products are prepared that are easily overlaid onto disease/dysfunction maps. For example, if an epidemiologist wishes to investigate factors associated with childhood asthma, it will be useful to model the physical location of patients with real-time and cumulative local airborne particulates over the study period. GEOSS can make a significant contribution to this class of activity by ensuring data are available and developing the modelling capability.

• GEOSS will be invaluable in allowing exposure and disease data to be related among populations. For example, the aerial particle pollution and health consequences among the World’s major cities could be compared and contrasted, and degenerating environmental conditions that could lead to the emergence of infectious diseases could be identified and reversed before a new epidemic occurs.

• It is essential to be able to relate the results of disease studies conducted in different times and locations. Historical data from satellites on the effects of land use and land

cover changes are needed to track, model and predict changes in ozone, particulate matter, chemical emissions, disease vectors, cancers, and birth defects to evaluate improvements in health conditions related to public well-being.

Pg. 201

• Health issues with Earth-observation needs include: airborne, marine, and water pollution; stratospheric ozone depletion; persistent organic pollutants; nutrition; and monitoring weather-related disease vectors. GEOSS will improve the flow of appropriate environmental data and health statistics to the health community, promoting a focus on prevention and contributing to continued improvements in human health worldwide.