EXHAUSTION

Exposure to heat and air pollution in Europe – cardiopulmonary impacts and benefits of mitigation and adaptation

EXHAUSTION aims to quantify the impact on health of extreme heat and air pollution, including air pollution from wildfires, provide adaptation mechanisms, and calculate the associated socio-economic costs.

The project will establish exposure-response relationships for short- and long-term impacts of extreme temperature and high air pollution on health. In addition, EXHAUSTION targets to provide quantitative projections of population exposure to extreme heat and air pollution in Europe for 2030, 2050 and 2100 under three alternative emission scenarios according to the latest IPCC report. EXHAUSTION will also develop innovative adaptation strategies informed by epidemiological evidence, and address major inequity issues by identifying how age, sex, and indicators of socio-economic status predict probability for health impairment caused by extreme heat and air pollution.

The ultimate goal of EXHAUSTION is to consult new policies on mitigation and adaptation to climate change for minimizing the relevant health and socio-economic impacts.

DRAXIS role in EXHAUSTION is to extend the already developed hackAIR platform to include information, not only on air quality, but also on heat waves and forest fires. The new version of hackAIR is already available for web, Android and iOS, and provides real-time and forecast information on air quality levels, heat stress and the probability of forest fires for several areas around the world, through machine-learning prediction models developed by DRAXIS. hackAIR also provides personalized recommendations on how citizens can protect themselves from the adverse effects of air pollution and heat stress, and also offers the ability for everyone to connect their own air quality monitoring device to the platform and visualize their measurements.