=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1322/paper_2
|storemode=property
|title=Overview of the FP7 Project EO2HEAVEN - Earth Observation and Environmental Modelling for the Mitigation of Health Risks
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1322/paper_2.pdf
|volume=Vol-1322
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==Overview of the FP7 Project EO2HEAVEN - Earth Observation and Environmental Modelling for the Mitigation of Health Risks==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1322/paper_2.pdf
Overview of the FP7 Project EO2HEAVEN
“Earth Observation and Environmental
Modelling for the Mitigation of Health Risks”
Kym Watson1 , Jose Lorenzo2 , Ingo Simonis3
1
Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation
IOSB, Fraunhoferstr. 1, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
kym.watson@iosb.fraunhofer.de
http://www.iosb.fraunhofer.de
2
Atos
jose.lorenzo@atos.net
http://atos.net/en-us/home.html
3
Open Geospatial Consortium
ingo.simonis@igsi.eu
http://www.opengeospatial.org
Abstract. The project EO2HEAVEN “Earth observation and environ-
mental modelling for the mitigation of health risks” advanced knowledge
on the impact of environmental factors on public health outcomes. The
multidisciplinary and user-driven project approach focused on the effect
of atmospheric pollution (in case studies in Durban / South Africa and
Saxony / Germany) on cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and the
waterborne disease cholera (in a case study in Uganda). EO2HEAVEN
has developed methodologies, models, spatial data services (using OGC
standards) and applications supporting the main activities involved in
environmental health: discovery and acquisition of environmental data,
integration of heterogeneous Earth observations (satellite, in-situ and
field data), development of models of health effects, development of risk
maps and predictions for early warning systems. EO2HEAVEN has spec-
ified and implemented a Spatial Information Infrastructure (SII). This
is an open architecture based on international standards and geospatial
web services supporting the large-scale initiative GEOSS of GEO.
Keywords: health risks, environmental models, spatial information in-
frastructure
1 The EO2HEAVEN Project
EO2HEAVEN was funded in the European Community’s Seventh Framework
Programme (FP7/2007-2013) in the Theme “Environment (including climate
change)” under grant agreement 244100. The project was coordinated by Fraun-
hofer IOSB with 10 partners from the European Union and 3 from Africa. The
project duration was 02/2010 - 05/2013. This large scale integrating project had
a cost budget of about 8.7 Meuro and a EU-funding budget of about 6.3 Meuro.
The project EO2HEAVEN took a multidisciplinary and user-driven project
approach focused on three case studies:
– The impact of air quality on respiratory and cardiovascular diseases in Sax-
ony, Germany
– The relationship between industrial pollutant exposure and adverse respira-
tory outcomes in Durban, South Africa
– The links between environmental variables and cholera outbreaks in the Kas-
ese district of Uganda.
Public health stakeholders and practitioners were actively involved in the
project activities and worked with technology and service providers in the areas
of Earth observation (EO) and environmental monitoring.
Air Quality and/or Aeroallergens
EARTH HEALTH
OBSERVATIONS DATA
Image: UKZN
Durban,
Saxony
WEB-ENABLED
PROCESSING,
MODELLING AND
FUSION
Water borne disease cholera
Image: S. Woodborne, CSIR
RISK MAPS
ALERTING Uganda
TOOLS
Fig. 1. Combining Earth observations and health data to produce risk maps and early
warning systems
As illustrated in Fig. 1, EO2HEAVEN has developed methodologies, corre-
lation models, spatial data services (using Standards of the Open Geospatial
Consortium) and applications supporting the main activities involved in envi-
ronmental health: discovery and acquisition of environmental data, integration
of heterogeneous Earth observations (satellite, in-situ and field data) and de-
velopment of models of health effects in correlation with the environment. The
final result is the development of risk maps and predictions for early warning
systems.
EO2HEAVEN has specified and implemented a Spatial Information Infras-
tructure (SII) to support the above methodological steps. This is an open archi-
tecture based on international standards and geospatial web services supporting
the large-scale initiative GEOSS of GEO (Group on Earth Observations). These
results are documented in publicly available reports and best practice documents,
cf. www.eo2heaven.org.
EO2HEAVEN contributed best practices and proof of concept implementa-
tions to GEOSS pilot activities. EO2HEAVEN had strong interactions with the
GEO Community of Practice “Health and Environment” and led the SBA health
activities in the GEO Architecture Implementation Pilot phase 5 (AIP-5). Spe-
cial emphasis was placed on achieving sustainability through capacity building in
stakeholder and user training workshops in Uganda, South Africa and Germany.
For details see the project web site www.eo2heaven.org. The EO2HEAVEN book
gives an easy-to-read overview of all project work [1].
2 Project objectives and main results
The two high-level project objectives of EO2HEAVEN were 1) the develop-
ment of a methodological approach for cross-domain analysis of environment
and health questions; and 2) to contribute to and support the large-scale ini-
tiatives GEOSS and INSPIRE. A number of specific objectives were defined
to achieve measurable progress towards these high-level objectives as described
below. The public reports referred to are available at http://www.eo2heaven.
org/category/documents-categories/public-deliverables.
1. To develop a shared understanding of the problems between the interdisci-
plinary research groups In order to facilitate the cross-domain work several
tasks and associated reports were achieved:
– The project took a multidisciplinary approach involving experts from
the domains of health, epidemiology, microbiology, geo-informatics, ICT,
modelling and statistics.
– The three Case Studies shared a common structure and delivery planning
split into three iterations. In collaboration with users, a detailed specifi-
cation of the use cases for each of the EO2HEAVEN development cycles
was provided. The specifications included functional and non-functional
requirements, criteria for the validation and descriptions of the technical
environment. In all, three full iterations of the Case Studies and use cases
specifications were completed. For collecting and harmonising the user
requirements from each use case specification there was a specific task
producing a Harmonised use case specification and user requirements
report after each cycle.
– To organise cross-domain workshops that address research topics from
an environmental, health and ethical perspective as well as the geospa-
tial technology and data viewpoint. The first training and stakeholder
workshops of the project were held in South Africa on 7-10 November
2011. They were directed towards training on the project’s intermediate
results related to data integration and software use. The results of the
workshops are documented in detail in specific reports with the On-line
Training materials and Training Workshops.
– A second series of cross-domain stakeholder and training workshops ad-
dressing research topics from an environmental, health and ethical per-
spective as well as the geospatial technology and data viewpoint was
organized and carried out with success in Uganda and South Africa.
The participants encompassed IT and GIS experts, environmental sci-
entists and experts in the field of health and the environment, as well
as medical and health practitioners. An international group of cholera
experts met under the auspices of EO2HEAVEN and now plan a longer
term collaboration.
– EO2HEAVEN participated in a number of GEO related meetings that
were attended by experts from many of the SBA domains. This promoted
the exchange of experience and approaches.
2. Establish a new quality for environmental health studies. To develop new
data fusion methodologies to integrate environmental data from EO and
various other sources into an information product that is best suited for
environmental health studies in the EO2HEAVEN Case Studies
– The work package about Environmental Monitoring for Health Applica-
tions provided recommendations on fit-for-purpose environmental infor-
mation products and suitable and robust methods and models for risk
map production or disease propagation simulations. The overall experi-
ence and gained knowledge in dealing with environmental data for health
applications has been compiled into a set of public reports:
• D3.11 Catalogue of EO/EI Data Products
• D3.13 Methodologies for Health and Environment data fusion and
data mining
• D3.14 Processing Chains Prototypes
• D3.15 Environmental Monitoring for Health Applications (provided
at the end of the project as an overall compilation of results)
– The task Synthesis and Recommendations put a strong emphasize on
summarising the results in relation to the Case Studies. The objective
was to collect information on the current status and experiences and
provide an overview of activities and results which cross the boundaries of
the Work Packages, but need to be treated as unified topics. This report
is structured into three major sections: Definitions, project approach
and case study outline; overview of health data and environmental data
in the context of the case studies; and best practice recommendations
for environment and health data correlation. This is available as public
deliverable D3.15 Environmental Monitoring for Health Applications.
– The final project results have been compiled in a published book available
as PDF or as a print medium [1].
3. Ensure that stakeholders know how to use the EO2HEAVEN data products
and tools: organise training workshops that address the EO2HEAVEN Case
Studies and provide practical tool exercises, and provide on-line materials
for e-learning
– For the stakeholder training workshops held in South Africa during 7-10
November 2011, a collection of presentations and exercises was devel-
oped. Cf. http://www.eo2heaven.org, subfolder “workshops”.
– A second iteration of stakeholder and training workshops was held in
Uganda and South Africa in February 2013:
• The workshops in the cholera prone Kasese district of Uganda tar-
geted local health workers.
• The workshops in Kampala and Pretoria were designed for health
and environment experts and responsible people at system organisa-
tion level. They focussed on methods and issues around the estab-
lishment of information and warning systems.
• The workshop in Durban was directed at the local stakeholders from
the eThekwini municipality, providing training on the use of an en-
vironmental health system
• These events allowed us to strengthen the links established with the
organisations and explore how to make the results sustainable. The
various training materials and presentations are available on-line.
4. Specify, develop and validate methods for extraction of Environmental pa-
rameters based on EO data and In-Situ sensors
– Progress in these tasks is mainly reflected in the public report D3.13
Methodologies for Health and Environment data fusion and data mining.
This document describes health and environment data fusion and data
mining methodologies that are considered useful in the field of health and
the environment. It provides guidance for the appropriate preparation,
use and fusion of environmental in-situ and remote sensing data, and
both forms of environmental data with health data. More precisely, the
objective of this document is to identify and present relevant methods
and tools to detect these correlations. The first section on the methods for
health and environmental data fusion and mining describes time series
extractions. Subsequent sections focus on spatial data fusion; air qual-
ity modelling; statistics such as descriptive statistics, non-spatial cluster
analysis); validation, e.g. validation of remote sensing data, validation of
health data, cross covariance analysis and the assessment of environment-
health relationships; spatial statistics and proxy data. Information is also
given on pre-processing methodologies, such as interpolation, aggrega-
tion, analysis of field and laboratory data.
– The description of scenarios includes the specific workflows and process-
ing steps of each scenario. Thus each scenario contains all necessary input
data, the processing steps and finally the results.
5. Contribution to the objectives of the health task HE-01 Tools and Infor-
mation for Health Decision-Making in the GEO workplan 2012-2015 (http:
//www.earthobservations.org/geoss_imp.php):
– Develop tools and information systems for the environment and human
health.
– Advance the integration of Earth observations and forecasts into health
decision-making processes.
– Engage with health users and decision-makers to identify needs.
– Carry out capacity building and the promotion and sustainable use of
Earth information by the health user-community.
– Establish linkages with other Societal Benefit Areas such as Ecosystems,
Biodiversity, Climate and Disasters
EO2HEAVEN contributed to the activities on components C1 (Air-borne
Diseases, Air Quality and Aeroallergens) and C2 (Water-borne Diseases,
Water Quality and Risk) in this HE-01 task. The EO2HEAVEN results are
recorded in the corresponding GEO component sheets. EO2HEAVEN con-
tributed to the definition of HE-01 and also led the health thread in AIP-5
(part of task IN-05 GEOSS Design and Interoperability) in the GEO Work-
plan 2012-2015. The EO2HEAVEN capacity building activities are recorded
in the results of the GEO task ID-01 “Developing Institutional and Indi-
vidual Capacity”. The realisation of a cholera early warning system with
components and knowledge from EO2HEAVEN is now being actively pur-
sued together with the pivotal organisations WHO (coordinator of GEO
task HE-01) and NOAA (point of contact for the component HE-01-C2 on
water-borne diseases). This activity initiated in EO2HEAVEN will continue
beyond the project. EO2HEAVEN has shown involvement in the health task
HE-01 through its continued participation in the GEO Health and Environ-
ment Community of Practice by representing the Health and Environment
CoP at a meeting of the GEO Integrated Global Water Cycle Observations
CoP. This will strengthen the linkage between the SBAs Health and Wa-
ter. The participation in other GEO events has contributed to an increased
awareness of the thematic links to other SBAs.
6. To provide an open and generic Spatial Information Infrastructure (SII) ar-
chitecture: base the architecture on open specifications; continue and expand
the architectures specified by the FP6 projects ORCHESTRA and SANY;
assure that the SII architecture complies with international standards; ac-
tive and early contribution to standardisation working groups and feed spec-
ification and implementation experience back to standards bodies; include
innovative technologies into the SII architecture and infrastructure
– The EO2HEAVEN Spatial Information Infrastructure (SII) is designed
as a multipart document structured in heavily interlinked reports Speci-
fication of the Spatial Information Infrastructure, Advanced Sensor Web
Enablement Concepts and Advanced Distributed Geo-Processing and Spa-
tial Decision Support, such that there is a coherent and redundancy-free
set of architectural specifications.
– The SII continues the series of architecture specifications of the pre-
vious FP6 European project ORCHESTRA and it builds upon agreed
specifications of a geospatial service-oriented architecture (SOA) pro-
vided by ORCHESTRA and extended by a Sensor Service Architecture
of the SANY project. The EO2HEAVEN extensions include topics on re-
mote sensing, health data (access control, integration with environmental
data) and mobile applications. EO2HEAVEN has submitted part of the
SII to OGC as a proposal for an OGC Best Practices Document for
Sensor Web Enablement - “Provision of Observations through an OGC
Sensor Observation Service (SOS)” (OGC 13-015, status: positive voting
result). This paper provides recommendations to simplify the provision
of observation data based on the SOS 2.0 standard, especially for scien-
tists and non-IT experts.
– The fourth issue of the SII was released as a set of public documents in
April 2013: D4.13 Specification of the SII Implementation Architecture
(issue 4), D4.14 Specification of the Advanced SWE Concepts (issue 4)
and D4.15 Specification of the Advanced Geo-processing Services (issue
4).
7. To provide an operational infrastructure: iterative and cyclic development
with explicit validation by end-users in each cycle
– The SW- Component Development & Integration work package struc-
tured its work into generic component development and specific com-
ponent development for the three case studies. Attention was paid to
technology for the different user classes (scientist vs. end user such as a
policy or decision maker) and with different end devices (desktop with
good internet connection vs. mobile platform such as smart phone or
tablet, possibly with intermittent connectivity). Several generic compo-
nents are available as open source software, thus setting up an environ-
ment to foster their sustainable development.
– Aligned with project work, EO2HEAVEN responded to the GEOSS AIP-
5 Call, following the collaboration already initiated within the previous
Architecture Implementation Pilots AIP-3 and AIP-4, with contributions
to the following threads: (1) to lead the SBA Health Air Quality and
Waterborne thread and (2) to provide a number of components and
data sets to be used in the same SBA Health thread. The main aim was
to facilitate the work of scientists by making data sets directly available
via standardized interfaces. The activities have been complemented by
a contribution of tutorials and best practice guides.
– A mobile application for health data collection in Uganda was specified
and implemented [2]. Currently, the recording of new cholera cases is
an error prone and inefficient process. The data gets copied from one
handwritten paper form to another, sometimes digitized and aggregated
several times, and reported in weekly or monthly intervals only. The
EO2HEAVEN client to record cholera cases on a mobile tablet computer
shall facilitate the data acquisition process during the registration and
further reporting of cholera patients.
3 Aspects of the EO2HEAVEN SII Architecture
EO2HEAVEN considered requirements from both the environmental and health
domains. In comparison to the environmental domain, there are several essential
differences in the health domain:
– information models (e.g. including epidemiological and diagnostic data)
– humans as sensors (issuing a diagnosis)
– reporting procedures: health data is aggregated and passed through a chain
of authorities
– quality and reliability of data
– depending on national law, health data is subject to strict security and access
constraints
EO2HEAVEN also tackled the partly conflicting requirements of the main
players in the health and environment field as shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Conflicting requirements of the players
Group Favourite Tools Vision
IT experts XML, Java, OGC Generic results
standards, Databases
Scientists Excel, R, MATLAB, Methods and models transferrable
CSV, maps to similar problems
Practitioners Web clients, black Optimized for own organization,
box Decision Support but extendable when new require-
System ments emerge
The OGC services used by the IT specialists comprised SOS (Sensor Ob-
servation Service to store and access observations / measurements), SPS (Sen-
sor Planning Service) and WPS (Web Processing Service) to parameterize and
schedule models, WMS (Web Map Service) and WFS (Web Feature Service).
The Observation & Measurement Model and Sensor Model Language were the
two fundamental information models. The software components and architec-
tures implemented in the three case studies are described in the public document
D5.17 Final specific components package (documentation).
The two central questions were: a) How can these “elephant-like” standards
be harnessed for data access, processing and publication? and b) And that with
good performance in distributed systems, with poor internet connection?
The following gives a compact summary of the main topics covered in the SII
architecture. It is a step towards distributed geo-processing and spatial decision
support incorporating models from the environmental and health domains and
enabling processing workflows for scientists. The use of sensor web technology
for analysing correlations between health and environmental data is looked at in
[3]. For further background on using OGC standards for modelling and scientific
workflows see [4]. The challenges of environmental and health studies in the
case of cholera research are explained in [5]. For challenges in analysing health
risks due to air pollution, see [6]. A technique for the spatial interpolation of air
quality data based on a regional classification is presented in [7].
– Part I: Overview
– Part II: SII Enterprise Viewpoint A summary of requirements, in particu-
lar from the case studies relating to issues of data and information, data
quality, security and user management, privacy of health data, events, pro-
cessing and fusion, decision support, integration of in-situ and EO data, and
environmental and health data
– Part III: Sensor Service Architecture Based on FP6 SANY SensorSA, and
adapted to latest standards, including models of interaction (request / reply,
event based), management of resources, meta information approach, security
with a focus on access control, considering specific EO2HEAVEN require-
ments, e.g. for health risk maps
– Part IV: SII Engineering and Technology Viewpoint Specification of the ar-
chitectural patterns and policies for the setup and operation of the SII, e.g.:
resource discovery for SOS observations and sensors, handling of large data
sets, processing and fusion support, processing of quality information (in-
situ and EO), attachment of quality information, handling and visualization
of uncertainty information.
– Part V: Advanced Sensor Web Enablement Concepts The purpose of Part
V was to facilitate the practical use of the OGC Sensor Web Enablement
(SWE) framework, to find a balance between a) full generality with complete
metadata and b) ease of use. With regard to the handling of remote sensing
data, this part includes a guide on metadata, on mapping of data to regular
grids for efficiency and on usage of SensorML for sensor description. A study
on using drones for gathering EO Data is also in Part V. Part V also analyses
the health data format SDMX-HD in conjunction with the SWE framework.
A universal mapping of SDMX-HD to O&M is not possible.
A user interface to define rules for event handling within the SWE Framework
was defined.
Semantic aspects going beyond the immediate needs of EO2HEAVEN were
also considered with work relating to a Semantic Catalogue, the Semantic
Sensor Network Ontology (SSNO) and linked data.
– Part VI: Advanced Distributed Geo-Processing Services A focus was placed
on making the geo-processing functionality of Software environments such as
GRASS, R and MATLAB available for use in SII (with a wrapper concept)
and on strengthening SWE integration (parsing SOS data for the WPS).
A concept of geo-processing repositories was introduced with a moving code
paradigm (improving performance) [8], [9], download functionality for off-line
usage and transparent and collaborative workflow development (researcher
stays in control, no black box). Experiments to improve performance (Cloud
Computing, using Graphical Processing Units GPU) are also reported on.
4 Conclusions and future work
The integration of remote sensing and in-situ sensing data is still a major chal-
lenge due to the different measurement procedures and spatio-temporal resolu-
tions. Handling the quality and privacy aspects of health data collection requires
further study. Scientists must learn and be able to publish their results together
with the code and the data in order to allow other scientists to validate and
build on their results. It is essential to bring scientists and practitioners together
across disciplines in order to solve the complex issues around decision support
systems in the health and environment domain. The rapid growth of data and
proliferation of models calls for advanced geo-spatial processing capabilities in
a true “Sensor and Model Web”. Health related topics will be taken up by the
newly founded OGC Health Domain Working Group.
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