Interactive Workshop with the URBANOME project

"Co-create the transition to European sustainable cities"

The main goal of the session is to present the URBANOME approach for improving the livability of citizens around Europe by innovating personal exposure assessment to health and wellbeing stressors. In this space, city officials, experts and researchers in the field can learn more about our initial approach for testing innovative policies to manage urban health and wellbeing tackling inequalities.

During the session, the participants will join a concrete interactive collaboration space to brainstorm and map ideas that can potentially improve the current models of citizens’ liveability assessment. On-line collaboration will be facilitated with the use of MIRO and Mentimiter.

Participants will:

Agenda:

11.30 – 11.35 am Welcome and objectives
Prof. Denis Sarigiannis – Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, URBANOME Project Coordinator

11.35 – 12.05 pm The URBANOME approach
Overview of the approach towards personal exposure assessment to health and wellbeing, including questions and answers
Prof. Denis Sarigiannis – Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

12.05 – 12.30 pm Interactive sessions
Co-creative approach to discuss the current URBANOME model in breakout rooms
Session moderated by Despoina Mantziari – Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

12.30 – 12.55 pm Connecting the dots towards the URBANOME future approach
Interactive session towards the final approach for URBANOME in plenary room
Session moderated by Francesca Spagnoli & Spela Zalokar – European Network of Living Labs

12.55 – 1.00 pm Next steps and closing of the event
Prof. Denis Sarigiannis – Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, URBANOME Project Coordinator

Thematic areas of focus:

  • integrated impact assessment of urban policies in support of air quality, climate change, urban governance, and sustainable urban planning in EU Member States
  • policy implementation and urban citizens’ behavioral responses to health and environment related policies and identification of vulnerable groups
  • technologies and methods for determining external exposures, including GPS-enabled personal sensors, remote sensing, agent-based models and influence of SES in relation to exposure and disease causation
  • state of the art modelling tools for Air Quality (AQ), sleep disorders, noise levels, green/blue spaces and impact on health and wellbeing
  • methods for endogenous exposure, such as endogenous synthesis of harmful compounds, and current approaches for estimating health effects at the individual and community level.

The URBANOME approach:

URBANOME promotes an Urban Living Lab approach to study experiences of urban health and wellbeing across 9 European cities. The URBANOME approach is applied through a set of Urban Living Labs in Aarhus, Athens, Aberdeen, Madrid, Milan, Ljubljana, Stuttgart, Paris and Thessaloniki tackling various levels of environmental exposures, age-dependent susceptibility windows, inter-individual variability, gender differentiation of exposure, and socio-economic disparities.

The determinants of urban health and wellbeing are translated into evidence–based policy recommendations considering socio-economic and environmental factors leading to urban health inequalities.

URBANOME implements a quadruple helix approach to engage with citizens, industry, public authorities (e.g. policy makers) and academia bringing their own experiences, skills, knowledge and networks to the project. Our methodology allows the stakeholders to offer know-how and actively being involved in defining and solving the problem of urban health, wellbeing and livability in collaboration with each other.

About the URBANOME project:

Integration of health concerns, environmental stressors and social equality in public and private activities helps to alleviate a wide range of contemporary urban challenges, specifically social cohesion and health inequality, and promote the transition of European cities to sustainable, climate proof, smart and inclusive urban economies.

The URBAN OBSERVATORY FOR MULTI-PARTICIPATORY ENHANCEMENT OF HEALTH (Acronym: URBANOME) is a 4-year project that has received funding from the European Union’s H2020 Framework Programme under the Grant Agreement No – 945391 CS1-BHC-29-2020), aiming to build a common EU Framework for evaluating comprehensively multi-sector policies in urban settings supporting the “Health in all Policies” approach of WHO.

In this light, the overall objective of URBANOME is to promote urban health, wellbeing, and liveability, by systematically integrating health concerns in urban policies and the activities of urban citizens, based on environmental health determinants, the spatial distribution of these in the city, and the social distribution of their impact among different population groups, accounting for different lifestyles and behaviors.

The methodology of URBANOME critically explores approaches and methods across regions to act as an integrating mechanism for the research strands dealing with exposure inequality, physical and mental health and sleep quality, integrated sustainable policy, and governance.

FACILITATORS