An open source web application for the surveillance and prevention of the impacts on public health of extreme meteorological events: the SUPREME system

Abstract

BackgroundEvery year, many deaths or health problems are directly linked to heat waves. Consequently, numerous jurisdictions around the world have developed intervention plans that are employed during extreme heat events; beyond their emergency sections, these plans generally include preventive measures to be implemented each year. Over the last five years, local and regional information systems have been implemented in a few Canadian cities for surveillance purposes. However, until recently, no such systems existed at the provincial level. In the context of the Government of Quebec's 2006-2012 Action Plan on Climate Change, a real-time integrated system for the surveillance and monitoring of extreme heat events has been implemented on a provincial level. The system is a component of a broader approach that would also monitor the public health impacts of all types of extreme meteorological events.ResultsAfter conducting a detailed needs analysis, the Quebec National Institute for Public Health developed and implemented an integrated web application leveraging open source software for the real-time Surveillance and Prevention of the impacts of Extreme Meteorological Events on public health, called the SUPREME system. Its first field use involved heat waves. This decision-support system is based on open source software and is composed of four modules: (1) data acquisition and integration, (2) risk analysis and alerts, (3), cartographic application, and (4) information dissemination - climate change and health portal. The system is available to health specialists through a secure web information portal and provides access to weather forecasts, historic and real-time indicators (including deaths and hospital admissions), alerts and various cartographic data used for conducting prevention activities and launching emergency measures.ConclusionsThe SUPREME system was implemented and used during the summer of 2010. It served as an important decision-making tool during the July 2010 heat wave in the province of Quebec, Canada. Planned improvements for 2011 include the integration of data related to other risk factors for other extreme events to the system. The next steps will be to provide access to the application to other groups of specialists that are involved in the prevention, monitoring, or analysis of extreme meteorological events and their effects on community health and well-being.

Health impacts of the July 2010 heat wave in Québec, Canada

“…In Québec, public health and civil-preparedness intervention during heat wave episodes is based on a common intervention guide developed in 2004 and updated in 2006 [21], on Environment Canada weather forecasts, on specific intervention thresholds by regions, and on the Système de surveillance et de prévention des impacts sanitaires des évènements météorologiques extrêmes (SUPREME, system for surveillance and prevention of the health impacts of extreme weather events) [46,47]. This system, developed by the Institut national de santé publique du Québec , has been available since May 2010 for the province’s regional and central public health authorities.…”

The burgeoning field of transdisciplinary adaptation research in Quebec (1998–): a climate change-related public health narrative

“…Studies were also conducted on airborne allergens, some vector-borne diseases, and on the current status of various measures recommended by international bodies as useful to health adaptation 36–43. The results were extremely interesting, leading to publications and reports, and permitting the development of important links with teams from other government departments and universities 36–43,96–102. For the first time, these publications characterized the extent of the impacts of average warming on future mortality in Quebec, thus allowing this phenomenon to be placed in the same quantitative context as road injuries in terms of expected future impacts.…”

“…This action plan was prepared in the political context of the January 2006 federal election of a Conservative government opposed to real implementation of the Kyoto Protocol in Canada, and therefore to any program involving climate change. After 3 years of unsuccessful negotiations between the Canadian federal government, opposed to the actual implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, and the Quebec government regarding the funding of its Climate Change Action Plan,102 Quebec finally decided to go it alone in June 2006 and to introduce the first carbon tax in North America. Established in November 2007, it is a carbon charge that major distributors pay per volume of hydrocarbons sold based on their intensity of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) production 104.…”

“…This tax is completely dedicated to the Green Fund, which is used to finance the government Climate Change Action Plan. This action plan consists of a series of 26 action packages targeting mitigation as much as adaptation measures, mainly in public health and emergency preparedness 102. The tax ensures a stable revenue of approximately CAD$200 million per year which, however, still remains marginal in the overall government budget (approximately 0.3%) 104…”

Documentation of Heritage Structures Through Geo-Crowdsourcing and Web-Mapping

“…Two open source spatial database servers: MySQL and PostgreSQL/PostGIS are popular for database management systems (DBMS). Although both database systems are very powerful in spatial support systems, PostgreSQL/PostGIS seems to have a larger range of spatial functionality (Cross Compare, 2012) and is used by many recent Web GIS solutions (Anderson et al, 2008;Evans and Sabel, 2012;Greene et al, 2007;MacEachren et al, 2008;Toutant et al, 2011). This geodatabase server was therefore chosen for implementation.…”