Earth Observation Data Supporting Non-Communicable Disease Research: A Review

Abstract

A disease is non-communicable when it is not transferred from one person to another. Typical examples include all types of cancer, diabetes, stroke, or allergies, as well as mental diseases. Non-communicable diseases have at least two things in common—environmental impact and chronicity. These diseases are often associated with reduced quality of life, a higher rate of premature deaths, and negative impacts on a countries’ economy due to healthcare costs and missing work force. Additionally, they affect the individual’s immune system, which increases susceptibility toward communicable diseases, such as the flu or other viral and bacterial infections. Thus, mitigating the effects of non-communicable diseases is one of the most pressing issues of modern medicine, healthcare, and governments in general. Apart from the predisposition toward such diseases (the genome), their occurrence is associated with environmental parameters that people are exposed to (the exposome). Exposure to stressors such as bad air or water quality, noise, extreme heat, or an overall unnatural surrounding all impact the susceptibility to non-communicable diseases. In the identification of such environmental parameters, geoinformation products derived from Earth Observation data acquired by satellites play an increasingly important role. In this paper, we present a review on the joint use of Earth Observation data and public health data for research on non-communicable diseases. We analyzed 146 articles from peer-reviewed journals (Impact Factor ≥ 2) from all over the world that included Earth Observation data and public health data for their assessments. Our results show that this field of synergistic geohealth analyses is still relatively young, with most studies published within the last five years and within national boundaries. While the contribution of Earth Observation, and especially remote sensing-derived geoinformation products on land surface dynamics is on the rise, there is still a huge potential for transdisciplinary integration into studies. We see the necessity for future research and advocate for the increased incorporation of thematically profound remote sensing products with high spatial and temporal resolution into the mapping of exposomes and thus the vulnerability and resilience assessment of a population regarding non-communicable diseases.

External exposome and all-cause mortality in European cohorts: the EXPANSE project

“…To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the association between the external exposome and all-cause mortality in multiple administrative and traditional adult cohorts. The research in the field of mapping the exposome is emerging ( 40 ), however, most studies have focused on birth or child cohorts and on its associations with different outcomes ( 41 , 42 ).…”

Risk Preference, Health Risk Perception, and Environmental Exposure Nexus: Evidence from Rural Women as Pig Breeders, China

“…The concept of "exposure" formerly originated from a few occupational diseases and epidemics, which generally act as an intermediary between risk factors and resultant health effects as doctors are more susceptible to viruses exposure (Rappaport, 2011). So the "exposure" is different from the risk and is considered as an interaction effect of individuals' intervention and risk factors (Sogno et al, 2020). There are three broad exposure categories-internal (e.g., hormones, microflora), specific external (e.g., infectious disease, toxicants), and general external (e.g., social, psychological) (Santos et al, 2020).…”

“…For instance, obesity, respiratory diseases, and various clinical illnesses have provoked the association of environmental exposure and its effects on residents' health (Sugiyama et al, 2018). Moreover, exposure to stressors such as bad air or water quality, noise, extreme heat, or an overall unnatural surrounding may endure the susceptibility to non-communicable diseases (Sogno et al, 2020). Besides, exposure to environmental factors such as green and blue environments, meteorological factors, noise, and air pollution has also been proven to impact residents' mental health directly (Boers et al, 2018;Dzhambov et al, 2018).…”

Insights from Explainable Artificial Intelligence of Pollution and Socioeconomic Influences for Respiratory Cancer Mortality in Italy

“…Success in mapping the human genome has stimulated the complementary concept of the exposome, i.e., the measure of the complete environmental exposure of an individual or a population to their surrounding environment and the study of how those exposures relate to health [1]. Research on the exposome in the context of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), or diseases that cannot be transferred from one person to the other, is relatively novel and advancing impressively [2]. Although NCDs are associated with a genetic predisposition (the genome), exposure to health-affecting environmental parameters has a strong impact on their risk.…”