Confined: for better or for worse - environmental impacts and health consequences

Speakers :

Antoine Flahault, Professor in the Faculty of Medicine and Director of the Institute of Global Health

Gregory Giuliani, Swiss Data Cube Project Manager and Lecturer at the Institute of Environmental Sciences

Moderator: Marcel Mione, journalist and producer. Magazine Géopolitis, RTS

With 4 billion people confined to the planet for more than two months and idling industrial activity, the effects on air quality are major. The most spectacular consequence is the very marked decrease in pollution, which can be seen on NASA or ESA images, whether in China, northern Italy or other parts of the world.

At UNIGE, a monitoring of air pollution in Switzerland and beyond is being developed using data analysis from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite. This information will then be cross-referenced with public health data in an attempt to assess the impact of pollution on our health and in particular on our vulnerability to Covid-19. If the results are conclusive, the message to our politicians will be very strong: by taking adequate measures to comply with the Paris Agreement, the health of the population will be better preserved.