Increasing the visibility and knowledge base on air quality with big data and its impact on the population health (VISIONAIR)

On 24 October 2023, the kick-off meeting of the new Erasmus+ KA220 Cooperative Partnerships project Increasing the visibility and knowledge base on air quality with big data and its impact on the population health (VISIONAIR).

On 24 October 2023, the kick-off meeting of the new Erasmus+ KA220 Cooperative Partnerships project Increasing the visibility and knowledge base on air quality with big data and its impact on the population health (VISIONAIR), no. 2023-1-SK01-KA220-HED-000158470, was held online through MS Teams.

The main coordinator is doc. Ing. Jakub Berčík, PhD., from the Institute of Marketing, Trade and Social Studies at the Faculty of Economics and Management of the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra, and his team of researchers.

The first meeting was attended by the project coordinator as well as representatives of four partner universities, namely: Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche (Spain), University of Zagreb (Croatia), University of Chemistry and Technology Prague (Czech Republic) and the Catholic University in Ružomberok (Slovakia).
The project, as the title implies, focuses on air pollution, because air quality and the level of air pollution has a strong negative impact on human health as well as the environment. Pollutants are produced by transport, construction, industry, but also by domestic heating with solid fuels or waste combustion. This is one of the most serious global environmental problems, affecting all countries around the world, as it is directly responsible for the increase in the number of people with allergies or suffering from asthma. It is a silent killer that is behind, for example, 5 000 premature deaths due to respiratory diseases per year in Slovakia and up to 7 million worldwide, and it represents 1 in 8 of the most common premature deaths. This problem thus represents a significant burden not only on the environment and human health, but also on national health systems, social systems and the economies of individual countries.

The project is divided into four work packages. Its main target groups are university students and teachers and the main objective is to strengthen the skills and knowledge base of university students and teachers to work with big data in the field of air quality, with the intention to examine its impact on population health as well as other social and economic aspects, and consequently to develop suggestions and concepts to improve air quality.