Climate-Related Health Risk Assessment and Climate Resilient Policy

Session Title: 

Synergizing Remote Sensing for climate-related health risk assessment and climate resilient policy

Organized by:

Focus:

Climate change acts as a risk multiplier for global public health, compounding environmental hazards such as extreme heat, wildfire smoke, power outage, and flooding. Traditional epidemiological frameworks often rely on sparse, aggregated ambient monitoring networks that mask localized environmental injustices and fail to capture environmental risks to health at scales. This session explores recent advancements in AI and remote sensing as a transformative toolkit to bridge this gap. By uncovering these hidden inequities, remote sensing can support data-driven urban policy making beyond the locals, fostering transboundary collaboration, and characterizing health risks in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Moving beyond static hazard mapping, this session highlights innovative applications of remote sensing to quantify dynamic environmental risk factors and model climate-resilient urban features that promote sustainability and public health.

We invite papers demonstrating novel applications or development of remote sensing methods in the following topics:

• Characterizing climate-related health risks and health disparity empowered by remote sensing data or novel workflows;
  Detecting health-beneficial (or detrimental) features across natural, built, or social environments using deep learning and AI (e.g. foundational models);
• Tracing longitudinal shifts in exposure (e.g., air pollution, urban morphology, or green canopy cover) and their subsequent health impacts;
• Applying change detection methodologies to evaluate the efficacy of environmental regulations or urban policies that have health intent