Environmental Health Impact Simulator

Environmental Health Impact Simulator (E-HIS), an online dashboard to map the morbidity related to air and noise pollution in Flanders

The Flemish Public Agency for Care & Health ('Agentschap Zorg en Gezondheid') commissioned VITO to map the morbidity and related economic costs caused by long-term exposure to air and noise pollution in Flanders at a high spatial resolution and to provide this information in an easy to use dissemination dashboard for its stakeholders. The first version was released in 2020, while an update is currently underway.

The resulting dashboard that was developed is called the Environmental Health Impact Simulator (E-HIS).  The online Tableau based dashboard shows, for all the considered health effects, an estimate for the number of cases linked to air and noise pollution and the related economic cost per statistical sector. The results can be aggregated to municipal or provincial levels, or summed for the entire Flemish Region.

VITO’s high resolution ATMO-Street maps for Flanders were used to provide the air quality data for the dose-exposure calculations (along with the noise maps and health data).  For each statistical sector (the smallest administrative unit in Belgium) the attributive number of cases related to pollution. These health impacts were then monetarised based on the findings of a literature study focusing on the economic costs of health conditions. 

Considering the numerous sources of input data and their uncertainty margins for the morbidity and economic cost calculations, VITO’s modelling team carried out an extensive sensitivity analysis to quantify the total uncertainty and the impact of the different underlying assumptions on the uncertainty.

The report detailing the work carried out by the ATMOSYS team is available here: https://www.departementzorg.be/nl/hoe-gezond-onze-leefomgeving-ontdek-het-met-de-e-his-infographic