By Prof. Chris Merchant…
UK Health Security Agency staff worked with EOCIS to consider how observations of land surface temperature (LST) from space could be useful in public health.
The public health rationale for looking at Earth observation based temperature is essentially that more spatial discrimination of temperature variations can help make better public health advice and decisions. Temperature is an important determinant of public health, in a number of ways – see figure. From space, variations in surface temperature down to the scale of 100 m can be seen, although not presently very frequently (many days between clear-sky observations).
UKHSA staff members from different teams participated in a workshop to explore the characteristics of LST to reflect on its scope for use. There were then follow-up interviews.
The range of use of temperature data within UKHSA is broad, from teams working on extreme events, to climate and health to gastrointestinal infections.
As usual, the requirements vary and some are challenging for space-based approaches.
Looking to the future, there is aspiration to go further, particularly in the areas of vector-borne and water-borne diseases and gastro-intestinal diseases. These are topics where high spatial discrimination of temperature might make more impact.
The Earth observation community and UKHSA will continue to explore new possibilities. UKHSA’s full public presentation of their conclusions can be viewed here.