2025-2029 | Belspo
CeRAC’s 2024 assessment of Belgium’s safe operating space highlighted multiple crossed planetary boundaries, necessitating input to assess their compounded risks. ChaRM-BE addresses this for Belgium’s urban areas, adopting a 'healthy society perspective' based on Rockström’s 2023 Earth System Boundaries framework. This approach enables health risk quantification from the interplay of climate change, air pollution, and land use, providing actionable insights for societal risk assessments for Belgium.
Belgium's cities face excessive heat (De Troeyer, 2020), with older adults most at risk for heat-related mortality (Crouzier, 2024). However, the compounded effects of high temperatures and other variables on mortality and morbidity remain underexplored (Ali, 2024). Socioeconomic disparities and cascading societal impacts also require further investigation. ChaRM-BE addresses this through five objectives: 1) Quantify compound impacts of conditions (heat, air pollution, droughts, humidity, wind) on mortality and health outcomes, examining disparities across socioeconomic and demographic groups; 2) Assess cascading effects on public health outcomes (e.g., sick leave, disability, early mortality) and associated societal costs using disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and cost-of-illness estimates; 3) Evaluate climate adaptation strategies, including urban land-use changes to reduce adverse compound conditions; 4) Model future health and societal risks, integrating temperature trends, urbanization, and demographic shifts; 5) Develop risk prioritization frameworks and guidelines for policymakers and urban planners to implement climate-adaptive strategies.
A literature review will inform a reversed impact-chain approach, using excess mortality and morbidity data to identify impactful meteorological and environmental conditions via high-resolution CORDEX.be II Belgian climate scenarios (WP1). Time-series analysis will estimate health risks while accounting for delayed effects of exposures (WP2). Stratified analyses will assess disparities in health risks across socioeconomic and demographic groups (WP3) and DALYs and (in)direct healthcare costs (WP4). The health benefits of urban interventions will be identified using climate adaptation scenarios in regional climate model simulations (WP5) and epidemiological models (WP6). Analyses will integrate into an interactive tool, qualitatively reviewed via (inter)national expert interviews for policy translation (WP7).
Climate and environmental data incorporate high-resolution simulations from Belgian scenarios (CORDEX.be II and ALARO-SURFEX). Health and socioeconomic data are drawn from the Intego practitioner database mainly in Flanders, extrapolated to Wallonia were needed, and national mortality statistics from Statbel and VUB. Hospital discharge records are analyzed using cost-of-illness frameworks, leveraging data from the Intermutualistic Agency and indirect cost estimates from the Belgian Health Interview Survey or Intego. DALY estimations align with the Belgian Burden of Disease (BeBOD) study.
CHaRM-BE is led by KUL, with RMI, Sciensano, Hasselt University, VUB, Université de Liège, and Ghent University, combining expertise in public health, climate modeling, urban planning, and socioeconomic analysis. Data-driven insights into compounding impacts on health and societal risks will directly support Belgium’s national adaptation strategies and CeRAC’s mission to enhance climate resilience and societal well-being.
