TRANSCAPE

The TRANSCAPE project aims to assess the impact of future urban transport landscapes on cardiometabolic health. Using agent-based modeling, the effects of future transportation scenarios on clinical and subclinial markers of cardiovascular disease as well as prevalent and incident cardiometabolic and cerebrovascular events will be examined: First, in scenarios where individual changes in the transportation landscape are implemented in the agent-based model while the rest of the environment (emissions from other sectors or the climate) is held constant; second, in a set of simulations based on comprehensive future scenarios using shared socio-economic pathways created for the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

The project will implement novel exposure estimation through the use of an agent-based modeling approach together with numerical air quality modeling for health-relevant but understudied air pollutants such as ultrafine particles, black carbon, and metal compounds in particulate matter. This modeled data will then be combined with data from the KORA (Cooperative Health Research in the Region Augsburg) cohort, a long-standing population-based cohort in the Augsburg region in Germany that has been intensively studied. The project will use data from an already-planned KORA health follow-up study with a special mobility questionnaire to assess travel behavior, along with data from personal exposure monitoring devices worn by volunteer participants to estimate individual time-activity and modeled air pollution exposures.  

Using these inputs, an agent-based model will be used to realistically simulate the entire study area population’s travel behavior along with estimated chemically resolved traffic emissions—tailpipe and non-tailpipe—that are a direct result of their behavior. High-resolution chemistry-transport modeling, including all other regional and urban emission sources, will be used to generate spatio-temporal exposure maps for all relevant environmental factors using the transportation sector emissions estimated by the agent-based model. Individual exposure will then be estimated by connecting the simulated agents with real participants from the KORA cohort. Epidemiological analysis will then derive exposure-risk-relationships, which will be used to scale the results to the whole population in the study area in the age range of KORA participants (50 to 90+ years of age). 

The project plans to later extend this approach to the Munich metropolitan area and then later to all of Germany. 

1. To develop an exposure model for ultrafine particles, black carbon and metals of particulate matter, as these are understudied but have been shown to be of health relevance. The exposure model will have a high spatial and temporal resolution, taking into account both the spatio-temporal variability of the environmental factors and the temporal activity of the population under investigation. Our modeling approach will allow explicit consideration of other relevant environmental factors (PM2.5, trace gases (NO2 and O3), traffic noise, air temperature, green space, physical activity, socioeconomic status (SES)). 

2. To link our exposure model with strong epidemiological evidence and use an existing population cohort (KORA, Cooperative Health Research in the Region of Augsburg) to estimate individual health effects. Cardiometabolic disease contributes a large proportion of the TRAP disease burden; therefore, we focus on clinical and subclinical markers of cardiometabolic disease. Individual health effects will be estimated for participants of the KORA cohort and then scaled up to the population level (Augsburg and region, Munich metropolitan area) and statistically to all of Germany using agent-based modeling. 

3. To predict future changes in health burdens due to changes in urban transportation landscapes using two approaches: complex mobility scenarios to evaluate realistic projections that also take into account the effects of climate change, and a set of simple scenarios to disentangle the effects of individual key measures. The health impacts will be evaluated for the study region of Augsburg, the Munich metropolitan area, and then scaled up to the whole of Germany. 

• University of Augsburg, Faculty of Medicine, Chair of Model-based Environmental Exposure Science: Christoph Knote, https://www.uni-augsburg.de/en/fakultaet/med/profs/exposure-science/  

• Technical University of Munich, TUM School of Engineering and Design, Professorship of Travel Behavior: Joanna Ji, Zhihua Jin, Rolf Moeckel, https://www.mos.ed.tum.de/en/tb/start-page/  

• Helmholtz Munich, Institute of Epidemiology, Research Group Environmental Risks: Alexandra Schneider 

• LMU Munich, IBE: Susanne Breitner-Busch