CUHK Research: Changing the world

to understand their working conditions and visualised their fears. The project culminated in the government’s proactive health intervention, such as HIV testing and education to the affected communities. New dimensions in environmental health As Director of the Institute of Space and Earth Information Science of CUHK, Professor Kwan is committed to developing the application of innovative GIS methods in researching environmental health, transport and urban planning in Hong Kong and mainland China. “One of the major issues we want to tackle is the uncertainties in individuals’ environmental exposures, such as green space, air pollution as well as COVID-19 risk. Most studies tend to use spatially aggregated data to examine the roles of environmental factors in health outcomes. But using such data may generate misleading conclusions,” Professor Kwan says. “These studies tend to link people’s health to their residential contexts, assuming that the residential neighbourhood is the most relevant area affecting people’s health but ignoring how their mobility exposes them to other contexts.” “My current major research interest is to integrate environmental science and health and establish a causal relationship between the environment and health so that policymakers can direct resources to the most needed areas and groups.” Her team is conducting two projects funded by the Research Grants Council on individual environmental exposure and health impact assessment, using Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking and real-time mobile sensing technology. One project focuses on noise and air pollution and their health effects in Hong Kong, Chicago, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. The other project, focusing on Hong Kong, considers more environmental factors, including green and blue spaces (rivers, lakes and seas), light at night, air pollution and noise, and comprehensive health outcomes including physical health, mental stress and sleep disturbance. The team’s mobile sensing technology can sense in real time the exposures that individuals experience every second, momentary subjective perceptions and psychological responses in real life scenarios, enabling more accurate assessment. Some of the major findings are that mobility- based exposure to green space is significantly higher than residence-based exposure, and that air pollution exposure assessments based on the government’s monitoring stations and the researchers’ real-time mobile have significant differences. The findings suggest policymakers should consider providing more green space in areas outside of people’s residential neighbourhoods instead, and review its biased estimates of personal pollution experience, she says. 57