Aerosol Science for Public Health and Public Policy through Commercial Avenues

Summary and context of the proposed fellowship

The desert-dust-induced hazardous smog event of early April 2014 that stretched across the Southeastern UK and resulted in recommended closures of school playgrounds [3] and a surge in reported breathing problems [4] is a recent example of the broad impact aerosols have on quality of life and the economy. NERC has funded and currently funds a wide range of aerosol-related research activities which hold potential for near-term societal benefits for public health and transportation through enhanced data use in the public sector and the broad commercial activities required to make this data accessible and relevant to end-users.

Broad expertise exists in the atmospheric science community in characterizing the atmosphere and its interactions with the built environment. Great value exists in the large amounts of data created on a daily basis through remote sensing, in situ monitoring, and modelling. There are two fundamental problems in translating this into public use. Sometimes we start by measuring or modelling what we can rather than what society most needs us to study. But the more common problem is that we create data with potential for societal benefit but do not fully exploit it and it remains untapped, in inaccessible locations or formats.

This NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellowship is focused primarily on two efforts. The first is increasing connections between the health sector and atmospheric researchers, and the speed at which knowledge in one area can be fed into the other and then into public policy. The second is to develop commercial markets for integration of air quality datasets (focused on particulates) with health data, where they will be in accessible formats and can be easily filtered temporally and spatially and easily displayed and interpreted using standard geographic information system (GIS) technologies.

At the University of Leicester, and with the support of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) and the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO), we are well positioned to leverage NERC's investment in aerosol and air quality science for maximized public benefit for health. Since 2000 over 10 million pounds of NERC funding has been invested in air quality research at the university. And equally importantly, Leicester is a national centre for the health sector, and there are strong existing links in health research at the university into the NHS, through for example, the NHS National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Respiratory Biomedical Research Unit (BRU) and the NHS NIHR Diet, Lifestyle, and Physical Activity BRU. So Leicester is an obvious place to bridge the gap between NERC atmospheric science and the health sector specifically on the health effects of particulates and other pollutants.

While other avenues for knowledge exchange are certain to emerge during the course of this fellowship, an important output of the proposed work is the development of a commercial strategy incorporation of existing air quality data sets into health data compatible formats through the Open Health Data journal http://openhealthdata.metajnl.com/ (Ubiquity Press). Editor-in-chief Dr. Jonathan Tedds, Director of Health and Research Data Informatics at the University of Leicester has expressed his enthusiastic support of this effort and is keen to invest his skills, experience, and computational and data management resources in assisting me in executing the work. A major big data coordination effort is necessary to specify data formats, liaise with data producers, solicit investment, and develop commercial relationships to enable this activity.

[3] http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/apr/02/pupils-indoors-lunch-smog-uk-government-adviser
[4] http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-air-pollution-saharan-dust-smog-leads-to-surge-in-999-calls-9234692.html