Space4Health

About the Project

As part of the Space Studies Program 2014, a team project was proposed focused on Space for Public Health. In this context, a team of about 30 international individuals were put together to develop a project around this broad topic.

After many discussions, the group decided to focus on use of disruptive innovation (from but not limited to space) in support of public health during natural disasters. We had 3 weeks to put our idea together into a coherent whole which we successfully did.

The concept relies on an integrated solution based on the following assets:

• Space assets in the form of nanosattelite used for observation and communication
• Mobile ground segments as a means of providing a hub for data collection, processing and communication while at the same time providing a local source of aid
• Swarms of robots used for local exploration of disaster regions and identification of site safety
• Wearables as a means of tagging identified victims and monitoring their vitals at the disaster site

The concept was generally well received and featured on the cover of the Journal for Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness.

Select Publications

1. Farhan M. Asrar, Annie Hui Wen, S. Ali Nasseri, Petros C. Dinas, Cory Newman, Angie Bukley, Kevin Crist, Dennis Irwin, “Space technologies for monitoring health and environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing”, The Lancet Planetary Health, vol. 2, issue 11, pp. e469-e470, 2018, doi: 10.1016/S2542-5196(18)30223-7. [joint first author]
2. P. C. Dinas*, C. Mueller*, N. Clark*, T. Elgin*, S. A. Nasseri*, E. Yaffe*, J. B. Clark, S. Madry and F. M. Asrar, “Innovative Methods to Benefit Public Health Using Space Technology During Disaster Relief”, Journal for Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, vol. 9 (3), pp. 319-328, 2015, doi: 10.1017/dmp.2015.29. [joint first author, paper highlighted on the cover of the journal, and received dedicated editorial]