Projects

Promoting climate health risk assessment using big data and emerging technologies

2027–2031

Synopsis

Global climate change is occurring at an unparalleled scale, and robust evidence on its health impacts is urgently needed by policymakers, healthcare systems, and the public. My work has played a pivotal role in highlighting that global climate change poses widespread threats to human health.

Despite substantial progress in the field of climate change and health, several critical questions and methodological challenges persist:

1. Sparse coverage of environmental monitoring stations hinders accurate exposure assessment and may lead to biased estimates of health impacts.
2. People are often simultaneously exposed to multiple environmental exposures (e.g., heat, air pollution, humidity), however, limited evidence is available for the combined health effects of these co-occurring exposures.
3. There remains a significant gap in understanding the contribution of climate change to the mortality burden associated with environmental exposures.
4. There are limited health data driven climate-health tools to communicate and intervene on these climate health risks.

This Investigator Grant program aims to address these gaps by advancing climate health assessment through the integration of big data analytics, emerging technologies, and innovative methodologies with the ultimate goal of generating robust epidemiological evidence that can directly inform the development of policies and guidelines aimed at preventing the adverse health impacts of climate change.

My research program will focus on four themes:

• Theme 1: Improve environmental exposure assessment;
• Theme 2: Advance health impact and climate attribution assessment;
• Theme 3: Develop practical intervention tools to reduce health impacts of climate change;
• Theme 4: Strengthen research capacity.

Through these initiatives, the program will generate more precise evidence, support capacity building, and ultimately improve population health outcomes in the face of global climate change

Plain language summary

This Investigator Grant research program will deliver highly impactful outcomes, including ground-breaking advancements in policy guidance related to global climate change. It will generate critical new evidence to directly inform public health policies and interventions, pioneer innovative methodologies in environmental epidemiology, and further reinforce Australia’s position as a global leader in this field.

Towards safeguarding maternal and child health from the impacts of bushfire smoke

2027–2031

Synopsis

Bushfire smoke poses a growing threat to maternal and child health in Australia and beyond, yet critical gaps remain, especially around exposure windows during pregnancy, long-term child health outcomes, and actionable protective strategies. My vision is to generate timely, high-impact evidence to guide protective action in bushfire-affected regions, establishing Australia as a global leader in protecting maternal and child health in a warming, fire-prone world.

As an internationally recognised leader in environmental health, I have led paradigm-shifting research at the interface of climate, air quality, and children’s health. My work has redefined bushfire smoke exposure assessment and health risk estimation. I have led large-scale projects across NHMRC, Horizon EU, and other national and international platforms, ensuring translation into policy and practice.

Over the next five years, my transformative program will generate foundational scientific knowledge, tools, and guidance central to safeguarding maternal and child health in Australia and informing policy beyond its borders. This Investigator Grant will deliver a fully integrated program with four interlinked themes:

1. Producing real-time, high-resolution bushfire smoke exposure data across Australia using advanced deep ensemble learning;
2. Quantifying the effects of maternal exposure on newborn and child health using entire-of-population linked datasets;
3. Developing living clinical guidelines, health communication tools, and targeted policy recommendations; and
4. Building national capacity and advancing bushfire epidemiology as a crucial new field.

Ambitious yet feasible, this program is anchored in Australia’s public health priorities and backed by strong infrastructure and partnerships. It will enable protection and prevention from the immediate and long-term effects of bushfire smoke exposure, improving health during pregnancy and childhood.

Plain language summary

With bushfires grow more frequent and severe, especially in Australia, their smoke poses rising health risks. This research program addresses key gaps in understanding impacts on mothers and children, focusing on exposure, health effects, and prevention. Leveraging my leading expertise in environmental health, it will generate evidence, guide interventions, shape policy, and build capacity to reduce risks and protect vulnerable populations in Australia and beyond.

HEI Australian wildfires and perinatal health risks

The unprecedented 2019-2020 wildfire season in Australia resulted in a declared state of emergency as bushfires (the Australian term for wildfires) burned ~5.8 million hectares, and nearby communities repeatedly experienced extreme levels of smoke. Extreme fire episodes will occur with higher frequency across Australia under climate change, as warmer temperatures lead to drier, more flammable conditions. Research on health burdens of wildfire smoke is limited, but existing evidence indicates impacts from short-term exposure, such as for hospital admissions. Evidence for a consistent association between wildfire smoke and adverse pregnancy outcomes remains understudied. Ambient particles from other typically urban sources have well-documented associations with birth outcomes. However, research including many HEI studies also show that the chemical composition of particles influences health consequences, indicating that risk estimates likely differ for wildfire PM2.5 versus PM2.5 total mass. To date, much of the literature has focused on a single fire episode and relatively small population. Other studies attempting to quantify long-term health impacts of smoke relied on concentration-response relationships for PM2.5 total mass, not wildfire-specific PM2.5. Our long-term goal is to develop the methods and scientific evidence to estimate the health burden of wildfires, including for sensitive subpopulations, and to develop advanced fire modelling approaches for this work, thereby laying the foundation for related future research. To achieve these goals, we must address critical research needs for the topic of wildfires. Specifically, novel methodologies are needed to estimate how populations are exposed to wildfire smoke for locations and time periods without monitors, and to disentangle PM2.5 from wildfires from that of other sources. One key method to estimate exposure is advanced fire modelling; however, this itself requires innovation as improvements are needed in fire modelling systems.

Our innovative exposure methodology, estimating wildfire-specific PM2.5 throughout the continent, will allow us to identify exposure gradients and health outcomes that are otherwise obscured through use of traditional monitor-based approaches.

This project is funded through a grant from the Health Effects Institute (RFA 20-1 Health Effects of Air Pollution).

Health assessment of bushfire smoke on children and pregnancy outcomes

Children are vital to a country’s present and its future. Healthy births and children are more likely to become healthy adults have long life expectancy. Recently, large and unprecedented bushfires (or wildfires) have been occurring frequently in many regions of the world, with grave consequences, particularly for Australia. However, there is a significant knowledge gap on whether children and pregnancy outcomes are impacted by bushfire smoke in Australia.

The aim of this Investigator Grant program is to provide crucial scientific evidence based on big data analysis, which is much needed to minimise harm from bushfire smoke on children and pregnancy outcomes for both Australian and international communities. The four broad themes proposed for this research program are to:

1. Estimate bushfire smoke using a mixed ensemble machine learning model and chemical transport model with remote sensing, weather data, land use information and an emission inventory;
2. Evaluate the health impacts of bushfire smoke on children’s mortality and morbidity and identify modification factors [e.g., sex and pre-existing chronic diseases];
3. Assess the impacts of bushfire smoke on pregnancy outcomes, and identify the vulnerable exposure windows during pregnancy that increases susceptibility; and
4. Enhance capacity building and advance the development of bushfire epidemiology.

This research program represents a transformative leap forward in our ability to inform better preparation for the risks of bushfire smoke on children and pregnancy outcomes. The outcomes of this research program will result in reduced hazard of bushfire smoke, leading to substantial gains in population and environmental health. Importantly, this work will allow for the expansion and sustainability of my team by generating opportunities for new PhD students, as well as providing avenues for career advancement for new and current postdoctoral researchers.

New knowledge and research capacity for health impacts of global environmental change with big data, novel approach and new technology

Global environmental change is unprecedented in scale, and the evidence on its risks to population health is needed urgently by governments, health service-providers and individuals. I have made great contribution to the recognition that global environmental change (e.g. extreme weathers and air pollution) is ubiquitous health risk to the general, current and future, and their unequal effects around the world.

There are several key questions and methodology challenges in the field of global environmental change and health:

1. Most existing studies have disadvantages of small sample size and limited diversity by age, or sex, or ethnicity or country because of financial and practical constraints;
2. There are limited monitoring stations for environmental exposure (e.g., air pollution), which limits the environmental health risk assessment and results in biased effect estimates;
3. Although several countries have applied adaptation policies for environmental change, it is still unknown whether population have adapted to the health impacts of global environmental change (e.g., heatwaves), and how to evaluate the effectiveness of the adaptation strategies?
4. The bushfire season is getting longer and episodes of severe fires are becoming more frequent. It is still unclear about the health effects of exposure to bushfire air pollution; and
5. Asia Pacific region has the most serious air pollution and largest population in the world. However, there is limited evidence on the long-term health impacts of air pollution in this region.

This research project will fill above gaps, through improving the air pollution measurements and development of Multi-Country Multi-City Study for Environmental Health Effect and Cohort Consortium for Long-term Air Pollution Effects in Asia Pacific. This program will enable more accurate research findings and facilitate capacity building of health impacts of global environmental change, leading to greater benefit to populations.

Climate change and human health in Asia: Current impacts, future risks, and health benefits of mitigation policies

Asia Pacific region (APR) will face profound stresses and challenges from climate change, if both average temperatures and extreme heat events increase as projected. There is an urgent need for a better quantitative understanding of the health effects of ambient temperatures, and this requires studies of both current health effects and scenario analyses of likely future health effects. These data would underpin future priority setting for climate adaptation and mitigation policies. To date, however, the study of the health effects of climate change remained largely outside the scope of public health research in APR, due to methodological complexities and data availability.

The overall aims of the Australian team are to:

1. lead to establish an Asia Pacific Collaborative Network for Climate Change and Human Health to comprehensively assess the health impacts of climate change and ambient temperature; and
2. generate essential scientific evidence needed by policy-makers and stakeholders for the development, prioritization and implementation of health protection strategies and policies regarding climate change.

The specific objectives are to:

1. assess the current health impacts of temperatures over time and space in APR;
2. predict future impacts of temperature on health outcomes (mortality and morbidity);
3. estimate current and future disease burden associated with temperatures in the APR under a range of climate and demographic change scenarios; and
4. assess the health co-benefits from climate mitigation strategies, and to provide a justifiable basis for establishment of adequate climate change mitigation policies and public health actions.

This project will be the largest to assess the health impacts of climate change and temperature in the APR. Knowledge arising from the project will provide vital evidence for governmental policy on implementation of the mitigation and adaptation policies to address the health challenges associated with climate change.

This project is supported by a NHMRC e-ASIA JRP grant.

research.monash.edu/en/projects/climate-change-and-human-health-in-asia-current-impacts-future-ri

Multi-country study on health effects of bushfire air pollution

Catastrophic bushfires are a major natural disaster, causing serious air pollution. However, aligning bushfire air pollution and public health policies becomes a significant challenge, because limited studies are available on relationships between bushfire air pollution and human health, particularly for the prolonged exposure. We will characterize the nature of the relationships between bushfire air pollution and mortality/morbidity by developing a multi-country study; and estimate the burden of diseases attributed to bushfire air pollution. This project will provide essential scientific evidence to policy-makers and stakeholders in the development, prioritization and implementation of health protection strategies and policies.

This project is supported by an ARC Discovery grant.

AI for estimating global bushfire smoke and its health burden

Our planet is facing more frequent, longer and unprecedented bushfires under climate change. The aim of this project is to apply AI for estimating the concentrations of bushfire smoke across the world and its global health burden, which is a vital prerequisite for guiding policy and the public health response.

There is a significant knowledge gap on the burden of bushfire smoke on human health.

Major barriers include:

1. only sparsely distributed air pollution monitoring stations, which substantially limits the exposure assessment of bushfire smoke because it is highly variable; and
2. lack of global health data.

This project is supported by a grant from the Monash Data Futures Institute.

research.monash.edu/en/projects/ai-for-estimating-global-bushfire-smoke-and-its-health-burden

Estimating high-resolution global daily ambient and wildfire-related PM2.5 using machine learning models

2021 Seed Funding from the Centre for Air pollution, energy and health Research

In this study, we aim to estimate the global daily concentrations of ambient PM2.5 and wildfire PM2.5 based on data of multiple predictors, such as meteorological factors, satellite observations (e.g., land use information, fire size and behaviour), and inputs from GEOS-Chem model.

First, we will link data of predictors with ground-based observations of PM2.5 from 11,404 monitor stations in 85 countries and regions during 2014−2019 (data already collected, Figure 1).

Based on this dataset, we will train a machine learning model that can accurately predict daily ambient PM2.5 with data of predictors.

With the trained model, we will then predict global high-resolution (0.1° × 0.1° or finer) daily ambient PM2.5 from 2014 to 2019 based on data of predictors.

Finally, the global wildfire PM2.5 at the same spatial and temporal resolution will be estimated as the differences between the simulated ambient PM2.5 with and without fire events.

The Fire Smoke Exposure Study

2020 Seed Funding from the Centre for Air pollution, energy and health Research

This aim of this project is to create a geodatabase of validated bushfire smoke exposures for all Australia from 2000 to present. The geodatabase will build on our previous published list of validated events for NSW, WA and TAS (Johnston et al. 2011; Hanigan et al. 2018) and will comprise national air pollution concentration surfaces (high spatial resolution maps) with new data and tools for linking exposure assessments with health outcomes data for studies of recent and historical smoke pollution events of fire smoke specific particulate matter (PM) concentrations. The project will also develop capacity for near-real-time smoke modelling to inform public health warning systems.

research.monash.edu/en/projects/the-fire-smoke-exposure-study-seed-funding-from-the-centre-for-ai

Air Pollution and Mortality and Morbidity in adult Australians (APMMA Study): A large population based cohort study

This study investigates the link between respiratory and cardiovascular disease and mortality and exposure to long-term air pollution. We will use cutting edge methods to assign neighbourhood air pollution levels to a large cohort of NSW adults (n>265,000) previously recruited in the 45 and Up Study. The study results will be of utmost importance in setting outdoor air pollution standards and informing cost benefit analyses of air pollution control strategies.

research.monash.edu/en/projects/air-pollution-and-mortality-and-morbidity-in-adult-australians-ap

NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence: Centre for Air pollution, energy and health Research (CAR)

CAR brings together over 30 leading Australian and international researchers from diverse but related disciplines. Members are based in eight of Australia's most prestigious research institutions.

CAR supports teams of researchers to pursue collaborative projects and to develop their capacity by providing:

• seed funding and PhD top-up scholarships within one of our research themes
• symposia, workshops and seminars
• opportunities for researchers to collaborate training to the next generation of researchers
• translation of research findings to influence policy and practice in the real world

CAR website: car-cre.org.au

Improving the assessment of environmental health risks with new technology and novel approaches

This project will answer key questions in assessment of environmental health risks, including:

1. how to improve the exposure assessment through new technology and advanced statistical models
2. whether health impacts of extreme weathers have changed over time
3. whether health impacts of air pollution are recoverable

The findings will provide strategies and supportive evidence for policy decisions to mitigate the health impacts of extreme weathers and air pollution.

This project involves global collaborators from more 30 countries.

This project is supported by the NHMRC.

Environmental exposure, human behaviour and respiratory health for children with asthma

Calculations based on satellite-derived data will update the knowledge base for assessing childhood asthma in relation to residential green spaces and local climate. The research is of great importance due to the high prevalence of asthma among Australian children. Findings will help health workers allocate resources for preventing asthma attacks and provide evidence for urban planning.

This project involves collaborators from several countries, and is supported by the NHMRC.

Initiating the Asia Pacific Cohort Consortium for Health Effects of Air Pollution

2019–2020

The overall goal of this project was to provide proof of concept for an external grant that aimed to establish an Asia Pacific Cohort Consortium for Health Effects of Air Pollution. The aim of the consortium is to characterize the nature of exposure response relationships for particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5μm (PM_2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), and ozone (O₃) in the low to high exposure range. We will seek to identify whether a minimum threshold in exposure level exists for
each of these air pollutants.

From Local Health to Global Climate: Assessing the air quality co-benefits of climate mitigation strategies in the U.S and China

Penn State–Monash Collaboration Development Fund (2019)

The goals of this collaborative project were to:

• assess state-level health co-benefits in China and the US using one standard modeling method to improve the comparability across strategies, regions and countries,
• assist climate change communication and integrated local decision making by creating a web-based, state-level visualization for the health co-benefits of various carbon mitigation pathways.

Specifically, researchers used an integrated assessment modeling method to assess the air quality and health impacts of a few selected mid-century carbon mitigation scenarios, i.e. the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP), in China and United States at the state/province level.

The SSP scenarios represent a range of possible future “pathways” with variations in demographics, economics and climate action over the next century.

Our research involved three steps:

1. assessing air pollution exposure levels for selected SSP scenarios based on the air quality simulation results from the AerChemMIP project (Aerosols and Chemistry Model Inter-comparison Project);
2. assessing the long-term mortality impacts in each scenario;
3. designing useful visualizations to display the health benefits at the subnational level.

Advancing Women’s Research Success Grant

Monash University (2019)

Dr Shanshan Li was awarded a Monash University Advancing Women’s Research Success Grant to support her Monash-Indonesia collaborative programme that examines children’s health effects of air pollution and high temperature, including a range of bio-indicators, physical and cognitive development.

The programme is at its initial phase and the research assistant’s activities include:

1. Preparation of ethical clearance at Monash end (primary ethics is processing and expected to be approved in Indonesia by 01/2019);
2. Data management: download and link air pollution and temperature data to health data (children’s health databases in Indonesia are available), and perform data cleaning;
3. Contribute to basic data analysis and involve in manuscript preparation;
4. Assist in development of funding proposals;
5. Communicate and coordinate with Indonesian research collaborators.

Estimating air pollution exposure and its health effects in China

NHMRC Centre for Air quality and health Research and evaluation (CAR) Seed Funding (2017)

research.monash.edu/en/projects/nhmrc-centre-for-air-quality-and-health-research-and-evaluation-c