Integrated Assessment of Health Risks from Environmental Stressors in Europe (INTARESE)
The INTARESE project is a five-year integrated project, funded (to a total of more than €12 million) through the 7th Research Framework Programme of the EU and involving leading scientists from 33 partner institutions in 13 countries across Europe.
The purpose of the project is to support implementation of the European Environment and Health Action Plan, by providing the methods and tools needed to integrated assessment of health risks from environmental stressors (e.g. air and water pollution, climate change).
Integrated assessment is more than the simple summation of traditional assessment methods. It demands the ability to analyse and compare different environmental processes and impacts, operating on different human populations at different spatial and temporal scales, and leading to different health effects. It demands also the provision of coherent information on these diverse risks and impacts in ways that can improve decision-making and enhance policy.
Integration thus involves:
- tracking risks through the full chain from source to impact (both on health and related monetary and social costs)
- assessing the combined and cumulative effects of different sources and stressors in relation to each specific health outcome
- assessing the different health effects arising from each source or stressor
- linking different policy areas and issues within a consistent and comparable assessment framework
- providing tools for risk assessment that meet the needs of the different stakeholders and users involved in any issue.
Integrated risk assessment requires linkage and use of a wide range of data, scientific knowledge and methodologies, including:
- monitoring technologies (including ground- and space-based environmental monitoring, biomonitoring and health surveillance)
- modelling methods (including process models, statistical models and geographical information system techniques)
- risk and impact assessment methodologies
- methods and tools for risk characterisation and risk communication.
In recent years, major scientific advances have been made in each of these areas. The need now is to bring these advances together, identify and fill key gaps in the existing knowledge and methodologies, and develop the tools needed to make them operational. The aim of the INTARESE project is to achieve this integration.
The INTARESE project began in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health in November 2005, and is co-ordinated by Professor David Briggs, Professor of Environment and Health Sciences.
As well as being responsible for overall co-ordination of the project, the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health is leading (and contributing to) specific research activities in a number of different areas.
Professor Briggs, for example, is co-ordinating the seven case studies exploring the use of the assessment methodology for policy analysis, while Dr Mark Nieuwenhuijsen is leading the case study on health effects of drinking water contamination.
Together with staff from the GIS group, they are also making major contributions to the design and formulation of the assessment framework, to the assessment and enhancement of monitoring and modelling techniques (especially in relation to exposure assessment and health surveillance), and to policy assessments of transport, housing, household hazardous chemicals and agricultural land use.
Full details of the project can be found at: http://www.intarese.org
