The discussion taking place during the stakeholder meeting was summarized graphically by UpSideUp.
The EXHAUSTION project is producing evidence on the links and correlated impacts between climate change, extreme heat and air pollution, including from wildfires, and the effects on human health. Topics that are highly relevant in Southern Europe. The EXHAUSTION Southern European stakeholder event held on 3 June 2022 organized by the University of Porto gave an opportunity to share and discuss research results, and policies and practices on the ground.
Porto Municipality Vice Mayor Filipe Manuel Ventura Camões de Almeida Araújo shared climate and health policy and practices from Porto whereas Vassiliki Karaouli, General Director of Public Health and Quality of Life at Ministry of Health in Greece shared experiences with different types of measures taken in Greece to protect people from extreme heat.
Heatwave+ forest fires = deadly
The health effects of heat waves in combination with forest fires and its effect on mortality was presented by Klea Katsouyanni at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Read more.
How to predict wildfires to prepare and prevent was discussed by Mikhail Sofiev from the Finnish Meteorological Institute. He pointed that wildfire hot spots are present both in Northern Portugal and Western Spain. Massimo Stafoggia from ASL Roma 1 in Italy presented research on the health effects of wildfires in Southern Europe, but also underlined that many open questions on this require further studies, including wildfire smoke interaction with heat and other air pollutants, chronic effects and who are most vulnerable. The benefit of the app hackAir to track combined impacts of climate and air pollution, including wildfires, on human health was presented by Panagiota Syropoulou from Draxis in Greece.
A session was also dedicated to interaction with the stakeholders for input to a science-policy brief.
The meeting was important to get feedback and ideas to help EXHASUTION ensure relevance of the research and develop policy recommendations tailored to specific needs in a southern European context.
