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External and Internal Human Exposure in Urban Exposome
New network to study harmful effects on city living: By 2100, 85 % of the world’s population will live in cities. In Europe, the level of urbanisation is expected to jump from 74 % today to 75 % in 2020 and 83.7 % in 2050. Cities are economic engines of the global economy but also hubs of environmental pollution. The EU-funded URBAN_X project will develop a strategic partnership between Barcelona’s Institute for Global Health (ISGLOBAL), the Czech Republic’s RECETOX Centre and the University College London. Together, they will study the quality of life and health of urban populations using advanced statistical and machine learning methods.
Objectives
More than half of the world population lives in urbanized areas, and the size of the urban population is continuously increasing. Urban populations are exposed to a large number of environmental influences that can negatively affect human health. In response to the urgent need to understand the impact of the urban environment on human health the new concept of the “urban exposome” has emerged. The aim of this project is to develop a strategic partnership of the RECETOX Centre in the Czech Republic, one of the Widening countries, with two leading international counterparts at the EU level (UCL in the UK, ISGlobal in Spain and UU in the Netherlands) to establish scientific collaboration and networking activities among these institutions to increase European research excellence in the area of the urban exposome. RECETOX has access to large longitudinal datasets of air monitoring, census, epidemiological and biomonitoring studies in urban areas but there is a relative lack of expertise at RECETOX to exploit these datasets’ full potential.
Therefore, there is a need to establish a strategic partnership with experienced international partners and global leaders in exposome studies. ISGlobal, UCL and UU will provide and transfer their expertise in investigating the urban exposome. The proposed research will link data on environmental exposures and health outcomes and use advanced statistical and machine learning methods to investigate the impact of the urban exposome on the health of urban populations. Through this strategic partnership, RECETOX expertise will be expended to the areas of environmental health and environmental epidemiology by the combination of collaborative research, education and training activities, junior researcher mobility and support for early stage researcher career development. The partnership with leading European research institutions will enhance RECETOX’s innovation capacity and research performance and improve its collaborative potential in Europe.
Source: URBAN_X - European Commission
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Icon image: H2020 New URBAN X Project.jpg