GDA-Health

Start: September 2024, 
End: May 2026

The GDA AID Public Health provides satellite Earth Observations in response to requirements identified by International Financial Institutions and their client governments in developing countries, focusing on multiple relevant public health themes.

Our work in this project

Discover the projects and services that support our work.

Modelling environmentally sensitive infectious diseases – The Global Health Resilience group develops models using Earth Observation (EO) data to predict environmentally sensitive infectious disease outbreaks. By analyzing patterns in temperature, rainfall, land use, and other environmental factors, these models can forecast human disease risk.

Why is this work relevant?

Public health around the world faces several challenges, from inaccessibility to health infrastructure, to nutrition and food insecurity, to increasing health risks due to climate change and environmentally sensitive infectious diseases. International Financial Institutions (IFIs) have introduced agendas that target these challenges, e.g., by strengthening health systems, increasing disease preparedness and resilience to climate-induced health risks, while improving nutrition (World Bank) and providing sustainable solutions to strengthen health infrastructure, governance and financing (Asian Development Bank). Pivotal to the work financed by IFIs is access to relevant data and synoptic information on health and their background environmental or socioeconomic triggers.

Earth Observation is increasingly seen as an essential source of information which can complement national data and support countries in the monitoring of key indicators related to health risks or factors of vulnerability.

The GDA AID Public Health activity consortium focuses on the following thematic areas: health infrastructure accessibility and vulnerability; climate-related health risks; environmentally sensitive infectious diseases; airborne and waterborne health hazards; emerging diseases in the One Health context; nutrition and food insecurity.