A global initiative to measure, map and meet the needs of individuals and communities vulnerable to water-related diseases in the face of environmental change.

The proposed research utilizes a combination of approaches and methodologies in order to identify the key environmental risk factors (both human and physical) influencing the prevalence of and vulnerability to selected infectious water-related diseases.  The project will build upon a considerable body of existing work within various disciplines including, but not limited to, human vulnerability studies, pathogen life cycles, disease transmission models, climate and environmental change scenarios, integrated modeling and digital mapping platforms.  This will be facilitated by a broad transdisciplinary research team and multiple partners brought together to undertake this project.

The primary purpose of the proposed project is to provide the necessary evidence by way of a suite of interactive mapping tools that facilitate the visualization of vulnerability to water-related diseases at a range of spatial scales, from the local to the global.  A living tool, these vulnerability maps will allow the layering of a range of environmental factors related to the physical, social, cultural, economic and political environments, building a composite of risk and vulnerability enabling assessment as it changes over both space and time.  This evidence-based tool will be available to policy and decision makers in addition to a wide range of end-users in order to inform resource allocation, policy development and targeted interventions.

Goal:

To examine the impacts of environmental change as they pertain to water-related infectious diseases, through the development of capacity building tools, in order to help reduce illness and enhance the health and quality of life of the world’s vulnerable populations.

Photo: UN-Habitat/Julius Mwelu

Objectives:

• To describe and map the current global burden of illness from selected water-related infectious diseases
• To identify environmental factors (physical, social, economic, cultural, political) impacting distribution and diffusion of, and adaptive capacity for, selected water-related infectious diseases
• To develop a vulnerability index for water-related infectious diseases that facilitates comparison across time and a range of spatial scales
• To map the location of  populations currently identified as vulnerable to water-related infectious diseases
• To identify areas where populations may become increasingly vulnerable to water-related infectious diseases as a result of anticipated environmental change
• To design and develop a globally applicable and accessible suite of interactive mapping tools for water-related infectious diseases in the context of environmental change 
• To develop a capacity-building strategy through dissemination of the suite of tools to a range of end-users at the water-health nexus

VMBackgroundDoc

Status: An initial planning meeting was held March 11-13 2009 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

KL Workshop Report

Mosquito fogging to control Dengue Fever: Putrajaya, Malaysia Lazuardi 2009

Last updated: 24 February 2011