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NGIS has collaborated with a range of organisations on the Australian Environmental Health (AusEnHealth) Strategic Planning Digital Twin project.
The project aims to understand the landscape of environmental health data collection around the country.
By 2030, the direct damage of costs to health is expected to be between $3 billion and $6 billion per year, due to rising temperatures, extreme weather and increasing carbon dioxide levels.
In turn, these will have an impact on heat-related illness and death, cardiovascular failure, injuries, vector-borne and water-borne diseases, asthma, cardiovascular disease, respiratory allergies and mental health.
The project explores new ways of working with health data for the creation and supply of high-quality environmental exposure and health indicators.
The data will inform and enable policy makers, health managers and researchers to find vulnerable populations, predict future disease burdens and plan for a changing climate.
Currently, there is no such national digital representation of environment and health indicators at a local level.
The project is a collaboration between FrontierSI, WA Department of Health, AURIN, Queensland University of Technology, TERN, EPA Victoria and NGIS.
In the collaboration, the team used Google Earth Engine and Big Query to develop key use cases based on user and stakeholder requirements and national environmental and health indicators.
NGIS undertook a national data audit to find relevant environmental and health datasets that can be applied at a spatial area level appropriate for targeted planning and intervention measures.
The project’s first paper has provided valuable descriptions of Australian environmental health and presents the resulting data integration, analysis and visualisation processes employed in the AusEnHealth project.
