Identification of Earth Observation data for health-environment studies

The availability and accessibility of an increasing amount of Earth Observation (EO) data enable the investigation of links between health effects and environmental conditions. A main challenge is the identification of suitable EO data according to the requirements for environmental information defined by health experts. The EO2HEAVEN project focuses on the development of an early alert system for air quality issues and cholera outbreaks. Under that frame, researchers and health experts identified 16 environmental parameters that may affect human health. These parameters concern weather and climate (air temperature, humidity and pressure, precipitation, wind), air quality (NO2, O3 and SO2 concentration, particulate matter), land (vegetation activity, land use, topography) and water (sea surface temperature, height and salinity, chlorophyll-a concentration). In this paper, we identify and comment on potentially suitable EO data for health applications. Whenever available, we prioritized the use of data registered as GEOSS resources.