A new integrated decision-making tool for urban health and policy evaluation: ‘QCumber-envHealth’

Decision-making and planning in rapidly growing urban centres require integrated assessment tools to determine impacts on environmental exposure, health and inequalities. However, there is a lack of integrated tools with which to determine current and future health risks and to evaluate policy options. Furthermore, despite the increasing availability of data, key datasets for such tools often have limited spatial detail since environmental monitoring is limited to a few urban sites and health microdata has restricted access, and methods for linking exposure to health have not been exploited. In the context of Glasgow with its wealth of data, this project builds on the successful QCumber system with state-of-the-art research and end-user participation, to create a unique data platform: “QCumber-envHealth” for health policy and inequality related decision-making. Innovations include: incorporating new health related behaviour data; integration of crowd sourcing and monitoring, creation of accessible synthetic health data and its integration; end-user led health risk modelling and policy scenarios.