TEMPUR: ClimaTE change-related Mortality in different Population groups in URbanized Belgium

Project description

Climate change is established to be unequivocal and has been unanimously identified as one of the biggest threats to health worldwide. Greenhouse gas emissions are the main driver of these global rising temperatures, affecting health and mortality worldwide. Currently, almost half of the global population lives in urban areas, usually characterized by their higher environmental hazard burden (e.g., elevated levels of heat and air pollution). With future projections of both population growth and climate change, exposure to environmental hazards and subsequent health risks are only expected to increase. For Belgium, one of Europe’s most urbanized countries, previous climate change-related research has focused on health- and mortality associations in relation to heat and has been mostly conducted at country- and citywide levels using classical regression methods. Evidence for the Belgian context is still scarce regarding climate change-related health impacts at high spatiotemporal resolution. The main aim of this project is to evaluate climate change-related (cause-specific) excess mortality attributed to temperature under different future climate and population projections at a high spatiotemporal scale in Belgium.