ENV4001 Seminar: Using remote sensing to generate environmental exposures for epidemiological studies with Dr. Meredith Franklin
When and Where
Speakers
Description
About the Seminar
Measuring environmental pollutants by placing instruments at point locations over a study area of interest is expensive and often does not provide the spatial and temporal coverage that is needed for assessing population health effects. Over the past two decades, remote sensing has become more ubiquitous as a tool for exposure assessment as instruments on board satellites provide spatially and temporally resolved information about atmospheric and land properties. I will describe how we have used satellite data to assess air pollutants, the built environment, greenspace, and fracking. Further I will show several studies where we have linked these satellite-derived exposures to the residential locations of children and pregnant women to assess outcomes including psychosocial stress, respiratory health, and birth outcomes.
About the Speaker
Meredith Franklin studied mathematics (B.Sc. McGill 2001), statistics (M.Sc. Carleton 2003) and environmental statistics (Ph.D. Harvard 2007). Before coming to the University of Toronto she was faculty at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Her research interests are at the intersection of statistics, data science, and the environment with the goal of better quantifying and understanding how the environment affects human health. She specializes in spatio-temporal methods for ground-level measurements and remote sensing data to characterize environmental factors such as air pollution, climate, and the built environment.