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The University of Southampton
Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute

One-day research workshop on investigating the effect of air quality on health Event

Date:
15 April 2013
Venue:
University of Southampton

For more information regarding this event, please email Mrs Jane Revell at j.revell@southampton.ac.uk .

Event details

Workshop

S3RI in the University of Southampton is organising this one-day meeting as the opening workshop for a major interdisciplinary EPSRC project  led by Dr Sujit Sahu. The project will develop and link statistical models for air quality and health outcomes and this workshop will present talks and discussions from the project investigators and stakeholders. This will allow researchers to find out more about the project and to share their own experiences at an informal level.


The workshop website provides further information .

Air pollution has been estimated to reduce average UK life expectancy by around 6 months, with annual costs of £19 billion. Understanding how it affects human health is a challenging statistical problem as data depend on both time and location and also on many features, and have complex correlations and structure.

The project, which is joint with the University of Glasgow and the UK Met Office, involves statisticians, air quality modellers, climate scientists and epidemiologists. The team will also benefit from Visiting Researcher Professor Alan Gelfand of Duke University, USA. The results from the research will inform government policies regarding air quality and environmental justice.

"An ambitious part of the project will evaluate the effect of exposure to air pollution on incidence of chronic diseases as a result of climate change, where the climate and resulting air quality will be projected to 2050 with the help of the UK Met Office, said Sujit."

Dr Duncan Lee, leader of the Glasgow team, added: "This project will allow us to link air-quality and chronic diseases in the most rigorous statistical framework and in a spatially disaggregated fashion? "

Patrick Sachon, Health Business Manager at the Met Office made the following statement regarding the project. "The Met Office has a major interest in the relationships between the outdoor environment and health, and in particular we have a long standing interest in the relationship between air quality and health outcomes. In addition, the Met Office atmospheric composition team is interested in the modelling and validation of air pollution concentrations using the Met Office AQUM model. The Met Office will bring unique expertise to the project in delivering both the modelled air quality and climate projections data that are needed for this project."

The project is going to run for three years starting January 2013 and is funding two research fellows, one each in Southampton and Glasgow. Three international research workshops, including this one, will be held during the project; two in Southampton and one in Glasgow.

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