Journal:Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s public-health monitoring and analysis platform: A satellite-derived environmental information system supporting epidemiological study

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Full article title Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s public-health monitoring and analysis platform: A satellite-derived
environmental information system supporting epidemiological study
Journal Geospatial Health
Author(s) Oyashi, Kei; Mizukami, Yosei; Kakuda, Ryosuke; Kobayashi, Yusuke; Kai, Hiroki; Tadono, Takeo
Author affiliation(s) Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Remote Sensing Technology Center of Japan
Primary contact Email: ohyoshi dot kei at jaxa dot jp
Year published 2019
Volume and issue 14(1)
Page(s) 717
DOI 10.4081/gh.2019.717
ISSN 1970-7096
Distribution license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
Website https://geospatialhealth.net/index.php/gh/article/view/717
Download https://geospatialhealth.net/index.php/gh/article/view/717/772 (PDF)

Abstract

Since the 1970s, Earth-observing satellites collect increasingly detailed environmental information on land cover, meteorological conditions, environmental variables, and air pollutants. This information spans the entire globe, and its acquisition plays an important role in epidemiological analysis when in situ data are unavailable or spatially and/or temporally sparse. In this paper, we present the development of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Public-health Monitoring and Analysis Platform, a user-friendly, web-based system providing environmental data on shortwave radiation, rainfall, soil moisture, the normalized difference vegetation index, aerosol optical thickness, land surface temperature and altitude. This system has been designed so that users would be able to download and utilize data without the need for additional data processing. The website allows interactive exchange, and users can request data for a specific geographic location and time using the information gained for the purpose of epidemiological analysis.

Keywords: earth-observing satellites, infection diseases, environmental information; online database; geospatial data; JPMAP, JAXA

Introduction

Climate change affects human health in diverse ways, including direct impact from extreme weather such as heat, drought, and heavy rain, and indirect impact through natural systems such as vector-borne diseases, water-borne diseases, and air pollution. Climate change also works through human systems, exemplified by occupational strain, malnutrition, and mental stress.[1][2] These and other types of phenomena have emerged in various regions of the world to threaten human civilization. It follows that the development of an understanding of climate-disease interactions, monitoring of outcomes, and identification of opportunities for mitigating adverse effects are important public-health research issues.[3] The United Nations (U.N.) is well aware of such threats and has developed an agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) tailored to meet these challenges. Among them, SDG No. 3 addresses infectious diseases and seeks to end epidemics caused by malaria, neglected tropical diseases, and water-borne infections by the year 2030, with the ultimate goal of ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages.[4]

Infectious diseases occur as a consequence of close interaction between humans, animals, and the environment they live in. Adopting the One Health approach, a collaborative effort of multiple disciplines to work for health across these three domains is essential for the identification of opportunities for health improvement and optimizing mitigation of risk.[5] Although estimates of the health impacts based on this approach require extensive data collection, information on important environmental variables are often missing or sparse with respect to both time and space. Insufficient data on parameters such as temperature, rainfall, land use/land cover, atmospheric pollutants, forest fires, and topography prevent researchers and practitioners from conducting comprehensive investigations.

Earth-observing satellites (EOS) play a vital role in the collection of the above-mentioned environmental factors since they consistently observe the entire globe within rapidly repeated time periods. More than 30 years of archived data, used in epidemiological studies of infectious diseases, are currently available, including knowledge of air-pollution levels and extreme weather conditions related to communicable diseases, such as lung afflictions and heat stroke.[6][7][8][9][10] The Group on Earth Observations (GEO), the biggest community of this kind, uses satellite-generated in-situ observations to address areas of societal benefit, including public-health surveillance, aiming to provide alerts regarding air quality, weather extremes, water-related illness, vector-borne disease, and assessments regarding access to health facilities.

As many governmental space agencies or enterprises have launched EOSs, a wide variety of satellite-collected environmental data is currently available, and much of this knowledge is provided free of charge via the internet. Available websites include the Copernicus open-access hub maintained by the European Space Agency, the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) maintained by the United States (U.S.) National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Geological Survey (USGS), and the Globe Portal System (G-Portal) provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. However, to make use of the data downloaded from these sites, additional data processing is generally needed for the desired epidemiological analyses to be carried out. For example, to acquire annual daily rainfall data for a specific area, 365 scenes must first be downloaded, then a subset of areal data must be generated and used to calculate the average rainfall. Further, to acquire surface temperature data in addition to rainfall data, a separate dataset must be downloaded, which may have a different data format since surface temperature and rainfall are retrieved from different sensors on-board different satellites. The risk of this problem not only increases when data are retrieved from different websites, but it can also prevent researchers from utilizing satellite-derived environmental information properly.

Satellite agencies have made significant efforts to develop satellite-based environmental information, including climatic factors, biophysical parameters, topographic data, etc. The values of these variables have been validated with ground-based measurements to ensure accuracy[11][12][13], and they may also have been subjected to inter-comparison of satellite-based measurements from different sensors to refine them.[14] In addition, satellite products are translated into input parameters, e.g., using the numerical crop model.[15] However, there are advantages and disadvantages with each product, and users have to select the products to meet their specific needs carefully, which would be similar to select reanalysis climate data provided by various agencies.[16] We have selected and integrated some validated environmental information distributed via different websites with different formats to construct a new web-based database. Our goal was to develop a user-friendly online system providing satellite-derived environmental information for the purposes of epidemiological analysis. The system presented here enables users to search, visualize, and download data that have been spatio-temporally pre-processed so that the data can be utilized immediately after download without additional processing.

Materials and methods

Overview

Figure 1 shows an overview of JAXA’s Public-health Monitor and Analysis Platform (JPMAP)[17], developed to provide satellite-derived environmental information, including shortwave radiation (solar radiation with wavelengths between 300 nm and 4 μm), rainfall, soil moisture, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), aerosol optical thickness (AOT), land surface temperature (LST), and altitude (Table 1), primarily to epidemiologists. The majority of this satellite-generated information comes from the JAXA Satellite Monitoring for Environmental Studies (JASMES)[18], which provides a wide variety of physical variables retrieved from NASA’s moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard the Terra and Aqua satellites. MODIS and the data it provides was used as the basis for the development of similar physical variables from the Second-Generation Land Imager (SEGLI) on-board the Global Change Observation Mission-Climate (GCOM-C) satellite launched by JAXA on December 23, 2017.[19] SGLI has a finer spatial resolution than MODIS in the visible to thermal infrared bands, with observations every two days[20], and it will eventually replace MODIS as the data source providing the GCOM-C products for JASMES.


Fig1 Oyashi GeospatialHlth2019 14-1.png

Figure 1. Overview of the satellite-derived environmental information provision system (JPMAP). JPMAP users can send queries to the system via the JPMAP website user interface, which results in spatio temporal processing of archived data. Users can also generate time- series plots based on query results and download time-series data. JAXA, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency; NASA/USGS, National Aeronautics and Space Administration/United States Geological Survey; GSMap, Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation; JASMES, Satellite Monitoring for Environmental Studies; AW3D30, Advanced Land Observing Satellite World 3D-30; GADM, Global Administrative Areas database.

Table 1. Sources of environmental data used on Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Public-health Monitoring and Analysis Platform
Product Units Grid size Data interval Data source
Rainfall mm 10 km Hourly JAXA
Shortwave radiation W/m2 5 km Daily JAXA
LST °C 5 km Four times/day NASA/USGS
AOT (at 550 nm) Unit-less 5 km Daily JAXA
NDVI Unit-less 5 km Daily JAXA
Soil moisture content Volume% 25 km Every two days JAXA
Altitude m 30 m - JAXA

Acknowledgements

THe GlobCover land cover map was obtained from the ESA GlobCover 2009 Project. The administrative boundary data (vector format data) were obtained from the GADM database. MOD11C1 Collection-6 data were obtained from NASA’s LandProcesses Distributed Active Archive Center located at the USGS EarthResources Observation and Science Center. Rainfall, shortwave radiation, soil moisture, NDVI, AOT, and altitude data were obtained from JAXA.

Contributions

KO wrote the draft of manuscript and designed the study; YM and TT reviewed the multiple versions of manuscript and contributed on study design; RK, YK, and HK contributed on coding and data processing.

Funding

None.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no potential conflict of interest.

References

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Notes

This presentation is faithful to the original, with only a few minor changes to presentation, grammar, and punctuation. In some cases important information was missing from the references, and that information was added. Inline URLs were web-based repositories of data were turned into external wiki links.