The URBANOME paradigm: Exploring the urban exposome to co-create urban interventions for better health and wellbeing
TIME
Friday 23 September
13.30 – 15.00
ORGANISER
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
INSERM
Josef Stefan Institute
University of Northumbria
Aarhus University
LOCATION
Sala Didattica
DESCRIPTION
This workshop focuses on the urban exposome, i.e. the totality of exposures to which the urban population is subjected throughout their life course, and its effects on human health and wellbeing. Capturing the detailed and comprehensive evidence of environmental health determinants, their temporal dynamics considering climate change and their spatial distribution in the city, and the social distribution of their impact among different population groups, needs to be linked to different lifestyles and behavioral patterns. Citizen science and community engagement are key components of this approach to the urban climate engaging citizens as active part of the scientific research team investigating the exposome in cities and how it affects public health.
An integrated methodological framework will be illustrated that brings together the complete set of environmental, social, and functional features of a city in an integrative analytical framework that would facilitate the identification of the main determinants of urban health and wellbeing and support co-creation and testing of policies and precision interventions designed to improve urban health and wellbeing through Urban Living Labs.
In addition, tools and methodological advances towards the delineation of an accurate spatial and temporal resolution of environmental exposures in a personalized manner will be laid out and patterns of socio-spatial environmental inequalities will be identified with a view to finally lead to social cohesion improvement.
The use of urban living labs and advanced personalised sensors as an effective means to ensure comprehensive community engagement towards investigating the exposure determinants of human health and wellbeing will be discussed and demonstrated on the basis of previous and currently running social experimentation. Coupling the external urban exposome characterisation with exposure and effect biomarkers that may act prognostically regarding the effect of environmental stressors on non-communicable disease incidence in cities will be discussed and showcased.
AGENDA
- A multi-objective participatory optimization methodology to assess human health and wellbeing in urban environment: the URBANOME project (D. Sarigiannis)
- Assessing the impact of environmental stressors on physical and mental health: A multi-modal big data perspective (P. Bamidis)
- Use of sensor based-technologies available for personal exposure assessment (D. Kocman)
- Exploring the urbanome in real life (I. Annesi Maesano)
- Ethnographic assessment of urban health and wellbeing (RGU)
- Innovative policy learning and improving governance capacity (A. Jensen)
THIS SESSION IS FOR
- Policy makers & city representatives
- Researchers & academics
- Living lab representatives and practitioners
SPEAKERS
Dimosthenis Sarigiannis
Professor, Director (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, HERACLES Research Center, University School for Advanced Study)

Dimosthenis Sarigiannis
Professor, Director (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, HERACLES Research Center, University School for Advanced Study)
Dimosthenis Sarigiannis is Professor of Environmental Engineering and Director of the Environmental Engineering Laboratory and the General Chemical Technology Laboratory of the Department of Chemical Engineering and of the Research Group on the Exposome and Health at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Innovation of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. He is also Associate Professor of Environmental Health Engineering at the Institute for Advanced Study (IUSS) in Pavia, Italy, Director of the Research Center on Complex Risk and Data Analysis and member of the coordination team of the nation-wide PhD program on Sustainable Development and Climate at the Institute for Advanced Study (IUSS) of Pavia in Italy and visiting Professor at the University of Paris. He is President of the Mediterranean Scientific Association for Environmental Protection, Vice-President of the Hellenic Society of Toxicology, member of the Expert Committee on Air Pollution of the Greek Ministry of Health and advisor to the WHO European Centre for Environment and Health. In 2015 he received the Bo Holmstedt award from EUROTOX for his contributions to the safety of pharmaceuticals and chemicals. His research focuses on the unraveling of the human exposome to improve the health risk assessment and to evaluate the effects of climate change and of climate change adaptation and mitigation policies. He is the author or co-author of over 160 scientific papers published in the peer-reviewed literature and 26 chapters in international books and monographs and has led or contributed to 50 international research projects in the above areas.
Caroline Hood
Lecturer in Sociology, Robert Gordon University

Caroline Hood
Lecturer in Sociology, Robert Gordon University
Caroline is a Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Applied Social Studies at Robert Gordon University. Her research interests focus on the organizational, practical, and social impediments of the successful implementation of cycling-specific policies and the construction of vulnerable road users within transport policy. She is also interested in wider themes within transportation, humans and the environment, and the stigma experienced by vulnerable groups. Her previous research includes the H2020 CIVITAS PORTIS project that focused on sustainable mobility and the creation of healthy and accessible city-port environments and the resolution of conflicts between freight, passenger, and non-motorised transport. Caroline is experienced in the application of qualitative research design to social and social policy based research.
Isabella Annesi-Maesano
Research Director at the French NIH (INSERM) and Professor of Environmental Epidemiology

Isabella Annesi-Maesano
Research Director at the French NIH (INSERM) and Professor of Environmental EpidemiologyIsabella Annesi-Maesano, Research Director at the French NIH (INSERM) and Professor of Environmental Epidemiology, is Deputy Director of the Desbrest Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health, a mixed INSERM and Montpellier University research unit . • Her main research results include the explanation of the etiopathogenesis of major allergic and respiratory diseases and related comorbidities through an exposomic approach in patients and general population samples in the frame of international research collaborations and projects including various funded by the EC. In the field of the exposome she has coordinated the EU FP7 ENV HEALS project.
Panagiotis Bamidis
Prof., Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Panagiotis Bamidis
Prof., Aristotle University of ThessalonikiPanagiotis Bamidis is Prof. in the School of Medicine of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He designs, implements and evaluates IT and Assistive Technologies systems that improve everyday activities of elderly or other vulnerable groups and improves their health or life quality or improves the education and training of health professionals. Co-creation and Living Lab approaches are within his active interests. He is the co-ordinator of six large European projects, and the principal investigator for many national and international funded projects. He is the President of the Hellenic Biomedical Technology Society, the international Society of Applied Neuroscience, a member of the Administration Boards of other societies and patient associations, the Chairman/Organiser of some 14 international conferences and several national Biomedical Technology conferences. Since 2012 he has established LLM Care ecosystem (www.llmcare.gr), the business exploitation of the LLM project, which is a candidate reference site of the EIP-on-AHA. In 2013 he established the Active and Healthy Ageing Living Lab in Thessaloniki (ThessAHALL; http://www.aha-livinglabs.com/) which in 2018 a full member of the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL). In 2017, he became a visiting Professor of Medical Education Technology, Innovation and Change for the Leeds Institute of Medical Education (LIME) of the University of Leeds, UK. He received Prizes for the Best Track Record in funded research projects (AUTH Research Committee 2009; AUTH Dean of health Sciences 2016) and Best overall high/extra-ordinary academic performance (AUTH Dean of Health Sciences 2018, 2019).
David Kocman
Senior Research Associate and Head of Environmental Informatics group, Jožef Stefan Institute

David Kocman
Senior Research Associate and Head of Environmental Informatics group, Jožef Stefan InstituteDr. David Kocman is a Senior Research Associate and Head of Environmental Informatics group within the Department of Environmental Sciences at Jožef Stefan Institute, Slovenia. His research interests focus on understanding of physical, chemical and biological processes that influence the environment, with emphasis on anthropogenically perturbed environments. His experience is in environmental data analysis, spatial data acquisition and management, participatory sensing using novel sensing technologies, citizen science approaches and testing of Citizens Observatory concepts for the assessment of exposure of human populations. He was involved in variety of multidisciplinary national and EU funded projects including CITI-SENSE, HEALS, ICARUS, SMURBS and CitieS-Health.