Publications related to Emerging Threats of Synthetic Biology and Biotechnology. Addressing Security and Resilience Issues

The role of spatial epidemiology to support public health policies : case studies applied to health promotion, noncommunicable and infectious diseases in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland

In a context of escalating public health challenges, including the rise of chronic diseases, the impact of climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic, certain populations bear a disproportionate burden. As a result, there is an urgent need to develop public ...

EPFL2024

Using automated design appraisal to model building-specific devaluation risk due to land-use change

Adam Robert Swietek

Uncertainty of spillover effects – including property devaluation - from proposed land-use change elicits opposition to local development. This hinders cities’ ability to implement land-use policy aimed at housing affordability and environmental sustainabi ...

2024

The synergistic interplay of artificial intelligence and digital twin in environmentally planning sustainable smart cities: A comprehensive systematic review

Jeffrey Huang, Simon Elias Bibri

The dynamic landscape of sustainable smart cities is witnessing a signi ficant transformation due to the integration of emerging computational technologies and innovative models. These advancements are reshaping data -driven planning strategies, practices, ...

Elsevier2024

Relating health benefits of water, sanitation, and hygiene services with the context of urban informal settlements: lessons from Côte d'Ivoire and Kenya

Vitor Pessoa Colombo

This thesis is inscribed in the recent efforts to reconnect urban planning and public health. It focused on the context of sub-Saharan African cities, for they offer invaluable lessons regarding environmental health determinants and potential solutions to ...

EPFL2023

Real world multimodal assessment of physical behavior change in health and disease

Gaëlle Prigent

Sedentary lifestyle is currently considered a global pandemic, associated with major health problems such as cardiovascular disease and premature death. Regular physical activity (PA) is one way to address this problem, as it brings a variety of health ben ...

EPFL2023

Housing, street and health: a new systemic research framework

Stéphane Joost, Paola Viganò, Catarina Wall Gago, Anna Pagani, Derek Pierre Christie, Dusan Licina, Valentin Daniel Maurice Bourdon, Idris Guessous, Mathias Lerch

As the world’s population grows in cities, urban dwellers spend a large amount of time inside their home, making housing health ever more important. Critical for residents’ health, the interactions between indoor residential environments and outdoor enviro ...

2023

Numerical simulation of the fate, transport and public health risks of enteric viruses in Lake Geneva

Chaojie Li

Lakes are a fundamental feature of nature with brilliance, profoundness and complexity. Various of physical, chemical and biological changes take place three dimensionally in deep lakes, regulated by complicated boundary conditions. To understand and predi ...

EPFL2023

Spatial analysis of the Healthy Built Environment: an application on Cardiovascular Risk Factors in the canton of Geneva

Andrea Salmi

Most of the world population lives in urban areas, the share of the urban population is estimated to increase in the future decades. The complexity of different land uses and services in urban areas, which composes the built environment, influences human h ...

EPFL2022

IRGC (2022) Ensuring the environmental sustainability of emerging technologies - 1. Workshop report

Marie-Valentine Renée Agnès Florin

This report assumes that something can be done to guide technology developers and others towards producing technology that does not cause indirect and delayed damage to the environment. It explores the extent to which environmental sustainability concerns ...

EPFL2022

Drivers and Barriers Toward Healthy and Environmentally Sustainable Eating in Switzerland: Linking Impacts to Intentions and Practices

Claudia Rebeca Binder Signer, Ivo Philippe Baur, Ralph Hansmann

Food consumption is among the activities with the most significant environmental impacts, and furthermore contributes to rising health costs. We explored the factors that foster or hinder healthy and sustainable eating in Switzerland. Based on an online ho ...

2022

Emerging Trends and Knowledge Structures of Urbanization and Environmental Sustainability: A Regional Perspective

Shakil Ahmad, Simon Elias Bibri

More than 59 million people reside in the six member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) (the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia). The rate of urbanization is more than 80% in each of these countries. To better ...

MDPI2022

On the use of applied machine learning and digital infrastructure to leverage social media data in health and epidemiology

Martin Mathias Müller

The quantification of population-level health behaviors is crucial for guiding public health policy. However, traditional methods for measuring such health behaviors have several short- comings. In recent years social media data has been successfully used ...

EPFL2021

Contactless Sleep Monitoring for Early Detection of Health Deteriorations in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: Exploratory Study

Philipp Buluschek, Daniel Gatica-Perez, Bruno Pais

Background: Population aging is posing multiple social and economic challenges to society. One such challenge is the social and economic burden related to increased health care expenditure caused by early institutionalizations. The use of modern pervasive ...

JMIR PUBLICATIONS, INC2021

Geospatial Analysis of Sodium and Potassium Intake: A Swiss Population-Based Study

Stéphane Joost, David Nicolas De Ridder, Murielle Bochud, Idris Guessous

Inadequate sodium and potassium dietary intakes are associated with major, yet preventable, health consequences. Local public health interventions can be facilitated and informed by fine-scale geospatial analyses. In this study, we assess the existence of ...

MDPI2021

Developing a UV climatology for public health purposes using satellite data

David Vernez, Athanasios Nenes

The effects of solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation on life on Earth differ greatly. While overexposure to UV rays is harmful, small amounts of exposure are necessary for the synthesis of Vitamin D and good health. To optimize individual exposure to solar UV, ...

2021

Seeking methods for improving sustainability in the extractive sector

Farnaz Eslamishoar

Extractive resources are indisputably a necessary component of international sustainable development. Despite current advancements in the circular economy, world production needs for raw materials are ever increasing, and still a long way remains for it to ...

EPFL2021

Occurrence of organic micropollutants and human health risk assessment based on consumption of Amaranthus viridis, Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Dominique Grandjean, Florian Frédéric Vincent Breider

The contamination of water resource and food chain by persistent organic pollutants (POPs) constitutes a major environmental and human health concern worldwide. The aim of this study was to investigate the levels of POPs in irrigation water, soil and in Am ...

2020

Efficient management of nanomaterial hazards in a large number of research laboratories in an academic environment

Thierry Meyer, Amela Groso, Anna Maria Novello, Elina Buitrago

As the number of engineered nanomaterials (ENM) used in research increases with an incredible speed, health and safety specialists are continuously faced with the challenge of evaluating the risks involved with these materials. Nowadays there is not enough ...

2020

Contact networks across ages: computational analysis of epidemiological dynamics

Gianrocco Lazzari

For decades mathematical modeling in epidemiology has helped understanding the dynamics of infectious diseases, as well as describe possible intervention scenarios to prevent and control them. However, such models were relying on several assumptions, such ...

EPFL2020

Hospital climate actions and assessment tools: a scoping review protocol

Nicola Mary Banwell

Introduction Health and climate change are inexorably linked through the exacerbation of health risks and the contribution of the health sector to greenhouse gas emissions. Climate action in healthcare settings is critical to reduce risks and impacts of cl ...

BMJ PUBLISHING GROUP2019