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Urban Resilience and One Health: Strategies for a Post-pandemic Vision

A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Global Health".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2023) | Viewed by 14020

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), New York, NY, USA
Interests: people first places; green building

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Guest Editor
Department of Building Production, University of Florence, 50121 Florence, Italy
Interests: building process management; vernacular architecture

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As de­fined by the European Commission, "One Health is an approach that recognizes that the health of people is closely connected to the health of animals and our shared environment". In addition to this, in 2015, the Rockefeller Foundation and The Lancet introduced the concept of “Planetary health”. Both concepts are rooted in the profound interdependence of human and natural systems and in the integration between planetary health and traditional environmental health. The One Health concept fosters a collaborative, multisectoral, transdisciplinary and multilevel approach to achieve optimal health and wellbeing outcomes recognizing the interconnections between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment. As a result, cities ­are themselves at the interface of many scales of engagement, activity, policymaking and intervention when dealing with the causes, treatment, and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Special Issue aims at activating synergic dialogues among disciplinary researchers and cultural domains toward urban vision challenges addressing the theme of resilience and adaptive experiences promoted from academia, experts, NGOs, and communities. The conceptual framework is the One Health approach and the possible contribution to a sustainable development from the enhancement of urban resilience capacities. 

Articles aimed at activating dialogues and debate among experiences, research, and conceptual reframing able to investigate the interdependencies between urban resilience and One Health and to develop renovated urban visions in the perspective of sustainability are welcome. In particular, we expect articles addressing the following themes: interdependence of human and natural systems; urban ecosystem and One Health; One Health and urban resilience hybridization; sustainable architecture in the perspective of mitigation of climate change and better outdoor/indoor air quality; reduction of risks to human health related to radon, asbestos, chemical compounds, and particulate matter; reduction of the risk of infectious diseases transmission, including COVID-19.  

Dr. Alessandro Miani
Dr. Prisco Piscitelli
Dr. Rachel Hodgton
Dr. Saverio Mecca
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • urban resilience
  • primary prevention
  • indoor pollution
  • radon
  • planetary health
  • sustainability

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Editorial

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4 pages, 248 KiB  
Editorial
Optimizing the Indoor Air Quality in Historical Buildings: Strategies for Environmental Improvement and Public Health Enhancement
by Prisco Piscitelli, Alessandro Miani, Saverio Mecca and Rachel Hodgton
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2024, 21(3), 341; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ijerph21030341 - 14 Mar 2024
Viewed by 1160
Abstract
The endeavor to maintain and enhance the indoor air quality (IAQ) in historical buildings transcends the traditional boundaries of cultural heritage preservation, emerging as a pivotal public health concern [...] Full article

Research

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18 pages, 1536 KiB  
Article
Efficacy of Low-Cost Sensor Networks at Detecting Fine-Scale Variations in Particulate Matter in Urban Environments
by Asrah Heintzelman, Gabriel M. Filippelli, Max J. Moreno-Madriñan, Jeffrey S. Wilson, Lixin Wang, Gregory K. Druschel and Vijay O. Lulla
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2023, 20(3), 1934; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ijerph20031934 - 20 Jan 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1888
Abstract
The negative health impacts of air pollution are well documented. Not as well-documented, however, is how particulate matter varies at the hyper-local scale, and the role that proximal sources play in influencing neighborhood-scale patterns. We examined PM2.5 variations in one airshed within [...] Read more.
The negative health impacts of air pollution are well documented. Not as well-documented, however, is how particulate matter varies at the hyper-local scale, and the role that proximal sources play in influencing neighborhood-scale patterns. We examined PM2.5 variations in one airshed within Indianapolis (Indianapolis, IN, USA) by utilizing data from 25 active PurpleAir (PA) sensors involving citizen scientists who hosted all but one unit (the control), as well as one EPA monitor. PA sensors report live measurements of PM2.5 on a crowd sourced map. After calibrating the data utilizing relative humidity and testing it against a mobile air-quality unit and an EPA monitor, we analyzed PM2.5 with meteorological data, tree canopy coverage, land use, and various census variables. Greater proximal tree canopy coverage was related to lower PM2.5 concentrations, which translates to greater health benefits. A 1% increase in tree canopy at the census tract level, a boundary delineated by the US Census Bureau, results in a ~0.12 µg/m3 decrease in PM2.5, and a 1% increase in “heavy industry” results in a 0.07 µg/m3 increase in PM2.5 concentrations. Although the overall results from these 25 sites are within the annual ranges established by the EPA, they reveal substantial variations that reinforce the value of hyper-local sensing technologies as a powerful surveillance tool. Full article
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24 pages, 4140 KiB  
Article
An International Comparative Study on the Resilience of Urban Communities after COVID-19 Pandemic: A One-Year Case Study between Lanzhou, China and Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
by Dingwei Niu, Lucang Wang, Wei Li and Yongchi Ma
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(21), 14458; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ijerph192114458 - 04 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1719
Abstract
After the prevailing of the COVID-19 pandemic, urban communities around the world took initiatives to bring their cities back to life. In this research, 45 indicators and 55 elements were selected to make comparisons between urban communities in Lanzhou, China and Sarajevo, Bosnia [...] Read more.
After the prevailing of the COVID-19 pandemic, urban communities around the world took initiatives to bring their cities back to life. In this research, 45 indicators and 55 elements were selected to make comparisons between urban communities in Lanzhou, China and Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina from five dimensions of social resilience, economic resilience, institutional resilience, infrastructural resilience, and community capital resilience. At the same time, the ArcGIS platform tool was used for spatial interpolation analysis. In this paper, the inverse distance weighting (IDW) method was used to carry out the spatial analysis of the perceived resilience of the two cities. Due to the heterogeneity of the neighborhood physical environment, operation and management mode, individual attribute characteristics, and internal relations, the resilience of the two urban communities showed disparity in different dimensions. Overall, the communities with good urban property management services, high-income owners, and the convenient transportation have stronger resilience in the face of pandemic. On the contrary, scattered communities, which are scattered in the inner cities, lack effective management, and based on unstable employment, people become the most affected by the epidemic with the lowest resilience power. The importance of social capital, represented by community understanding, identity, and mutual help and cooperation between neighbors, is highlighted in the resilience assessment of the two cities, respectively, in the East and West, indicating that to build more resilient cities, in addition to improving government management and increasing investment in urban infrastructure, building the residents’ sense of belonging, identity, and enduring community culture is even more important in the construction of resilient cities. Full article
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Review

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18 pages, 666 KiB  
Review
How Antimicrobial Resistance Is Linked to Climate Change: An Overview of Two Intertwined Global Challenges
by Roberta Magnano San Lio, Giuliana Favara, Andrea Maugeri, Martina Barchitta and Antonella Agodi
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2023, 20(3), 1681; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ijerph20031681 - 17 Jan 2023
Cited by 241 | Viewed by 7719
Abstract
Globally, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and climate change (CC) are two of the top health emergencies, and can be considered as two interlinked public health priorities. The complex commonalities between AMR and CC should be deeply investigated in a One Health perspective. Here, we [...] Read more.
Globally, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and climate change (CC) are two of the top health emergencies, and can be considered as two interlinked public health priorities. The complex commonalities between AMR and CC should be deeply investigated in a One Health perspective. Here, we provided an overview of the current knowledge about the relationship between AMR and CC. Overall, the studies included pointed out the need for applying a systemic approach to planetary health. Firstly, CC increasingly brings humans and animals into contact, leading to outbreaks of zoonotic and vector-borne diseases with pandemic potential. Although it is well-established that antimicrobial use in human, animal and environmental sectors is one of the main drivers of AMR, the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating the current scenario, by influencing the use of antibiotics, personal protective equipment, and biocides. This also results in higher concentrations of contaminants (e.g., microplastics) in natural water bodies, which cannot be completely removed from wastewater treatment plants, and which could sustain the AMR spread. Our overview underlined the lack of studies on the direct relationship between AMR and CC, and encouraged further research to investigate the multiple aspects involved, and its effect on human health. Full article
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