DIETI Contact person / Partner: Francesco Gentile
Abstract
What we release into the environment can come back to us, often with negative effects. At high exposure levels, environmental pollution can cause adverse health effects. There are no doubts on the negative effects of environmental pollution on human health, what can still be verified is the correlation between implicated variables (lifestyle, pollutant, social context) and the appearance of many diseases (respiratory, oncological, etc.).
This project aims to integrate a huge amount of health, socio-economic and environmental data in order to determine the cause-effects relationships between environmental pollution and human health. In particular, the goal is to propose the study and the development of a forecast model related to the spread of pollutants in a given area and of a correlation model between the concentration of the very same pollutants and health data of people living in the analysed geographical area.
It’s of utmost importance to ensure the semantic interoperability between different databases, i.e. the capability of a computer system to cooperate and exchange data with other systems, in a more or less complete and error-free way, with reliability and resource efficiency. Interoperability’s purpose is to ease interaction between different systems as well as data exchange and reuse between not homogenous information systems.
Objective
The increase in pollution-related diseases turned science’s attention to the correlation between man-environment to safeguard the living condition of the planet and its inhabitants. Starting from the concentration maps of the pollutants taken into consideration it will be possible to identify impact areas and/or the ones with higher pollutants concentrations. Information obtained will support the acknowledgment of a correlation with health data regarding patients suffering respiratory, oncologic, etc. The development of knowledge on the relationship between environment and human health is mandatory to develop programs useful in protecting environment and in preventing related diseases.
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Available
Can be assigned to one doctoral student of cycle XXXVI