Abstract: Environmental exposures (EE) are increasingly recognised as important determinants of health and well-being. Understanding the influences of EE on health is critical for effective policymaking, but better-quality spatial data is needed. In this seminar, Dr Kimon Krenz will outline the theoretical and technical foundations for the construction of longitudinal individual-level environmental exposure measurements for the population of Bradford, UK. The work supports ‘Connected Bradford’, an entire population database linking health, education, social care, environmental and other local government data over a period of forty years. Our current understanding of environmental effects on health outcomes is limited both by methodological shortcomings in the quantification of the environment and by a lack of consistency in the measurement of built environment features. Addressing these shortcomings, Kimon will introduce a GIS-based approach to measure environmental exposure for a series of different domains including air quality, greenspace and greenness, public transport, walkability, traffic, buildings and the built form, street centrality, land-use intensity, food environments as well as indoor dwelling qualities. The approach utilises general practitioners’ historical patient information to identify the precise geolocation and duration of a person’s residence and models a person’s local neighbourhood and the probable routes to key urban functions across the city. Besides insights into the specific geospatial procedure used to quantify the environmental exposure for each domain, Kimon will elaborate on how this method can be applied to other existing UK cohort surveys as well as individual research into the relationship between the built environment and health outcomes.

Bio: Dr Kimon Krenz is a Research Associate and member of the Space Syntax Laboratory at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where he also obtained his PhD in Urban Space and Computation. Kimon’s research employs computational methods to quantify and analyse the built environment, investigating how space influences human behaviour. He is interested in utilizing spatial data science techniques to uncover spatial, economic, social and health disparities, and to use this knowledge to inform evidence-based urban planning and policymaking. As part of the ActEarly project, his current research is focused on the relationships between the built environment and health and well-being during early life. Twitter | Website | Scholar

Actearly Methods Club: A GIS approach to measuring environmental exposure