BLUEHEALTH

The majority of Europe’s population live in urban areas characterised by inland waterways and coastal margins. BlueHealth is researching how these environments can affect health promotion and disease, and is working with communities, private sector organisations and policymakers to ensure its findings are focused and relevant. BlueHealth will focus on urban blue infrastructures. Blue infrastructure refers to the network of natural and man-made aquatic environments providing a range of multi-sectorial services (e.g. transportation, fresh water provision). There has been no systematic attempt to detail the potential impacts of our blue infrastructure on health promotion and disease prevention, nor to develop guidelines on how health should be considered when developing blue infrastructure interventions, particularly across sectors.

The EU’s blue infrastructure offers significant health and well-being related opportunities and benefits (e.g. urban cooling, recreation), but also challenges and stressors (eg flooding, microbial/chemical pollution). BlueHealth will investigate these trade-offs, with the aims of quantifying the impacts on population health and well-being of interventions and policy initiatives connected to blue infrastructure, and identifying success factors and obstacles of inter-sectorial collaborations. Assessments of health and environment benefits, risks and costs will improve our understanding of the role of urban blue infrastructures on across-sector health promotion and disease prevention. The Partners have collaborations across the Environment, Health, and Climate sectors, and extensive experience with inter-institutional, multi-sectorial, interdisciplinary research programmes employing innovation, stakeholder engagement, dissemination, and policy impact.

Expected results include:

1. 360 videos in virtual reality: This project is examining whether 360 videos can be used in virtual reality to improve health and wellbeing.
2. BlueHealth environmental assessment tool: developing a tool for evaluating the social, physical or ecological characteristics of the built environment.
3. BlueHealth Survey: the BlueHealth Survey will provide information about how people across the world use urban blue environments. It includes responses from over 18,000 people across eighteen countries from 2016 to 2018.
4. Computer-generated virtual reality: This project is examining how different types of virtual environments might be used to improve health and wellbeing.
5. Decision-Support Tool: This project is creating a tool to help planners design effective urban blue spaces.
6. Regeneration project review: This critical review will help to understand the criteria which make regeneration projects successful in urban blue environments.
7. Blue Health Secondary data analyses: This study is using data sets which already exist to quantify the health and wellbeing benefits of urban blue spaces.

All the expected results from ongoing projects can be consulted here: https://bluehealth2020.eu/projects