From pixels to policies: geospatial data support against serious cross-border threats to health

Abstract

The Regulation on serious cross-border threats to health (EU 2022/2371) established a reinforced framework for surveillance, early warning, and response across EU Member States. Yet detecting and anticipating climate- and environment-driven health threats requires going beyond traditional epidemiological surveillance, integrating environmental and socio-economic dimensions of population exposure and vulnerability into operational decision-support tools. This presentation introduces the EEA Health Crisis Toolbox, a geospatial platform integrating data from Copernicus, CAMS, EFFIS, and Eurostat to characterise population exposure and vulnerability across Europe. The Toolbox demonstrates how geospatial data can support early warning across four hazard scenarios — heatwaves, wildfires, flooding, and air pollution episodes — by combining real-time environmental monitoring with population density, age structure, and socio-economic vulnerability indicators. By translating geospatial data into actionable health intelligence, the Toolbox offers a concrete operational contribution to EU health security preparedness, bridging the gap between environmental monitoring and public health response in an era of accelerating climate risk.