I recently coauthored an article in the journal Cities titled “A Road Map for Future Data-Driven Urban Planning and Environmental Health Research.” This arose from a symposium in Sitges, Spain which I was invited to last year by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health.
From the 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.
For more, check out the article.