IN-PERSON Lisbon Livable Cities. Section A
Abstract
Urban environments comprise different green spaces, including private residential gardens and public parks, which are associated with healthier communities. Our research in the UK shows that public urban green spaces are associated with lower rates of metabolic syndrome (a risk factor for diabetes and cardiovascular disease), especially in males, middle-aged adults, and people in deprived areas. The global turned towards greater urbanisation and the associated fragmentation of natural environments have led to increasing calls for planners to consider the ecological roles fulfilled by urban green spaces, especially for species conservation. However, not all urban wildlife species (including insects and animals) are a benign presence for the human inhabitants of urban areas. Human health risks include vector-borne diseases and zoonotic pathogens such as bat lyssaviruses (rabies-like), which cause rare but fatal infections in Australia and Europe.
Our research shows that careful planning is required to proactively de-urbanise flying foxes alongside conservation programs to de-escalate human-bat conflict. Indeed, if nothing changes, the risk to humans continues to increase until the flying fox population crashes. If conservation is successful in the absence of de-urbanisation, the risk to humans increases substantially. The only option is a One Health solution that involves town planners and ecologists to achieve conservation/re-wilding objectives that include de-urbanisation of flying foxes to reduce risks to human health. This may include larger areas of greenspace in urban areas, decentralisation of cities, less radial design of cities, or high-density population areas among greenspace and less continuous suburban areas (less urban sprawl).
Simon Reid is a Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Queensland. He is a keen advocate of One Health and the application of systems thinking approaches to understand and improve interventions for wicked zoonotic disease problems at the human-animal-ecosystem interface such as leptospirosis, brucellosis, human-bat interactions and antimicrobial resistance. His research focuses on understanding how to improve multisectoral governance, planning and implementation of responses to manage One Health problems.
Chinonso Odebeatu is a PhD student studying the health benefits of green space exposure; Eryn Wright is a Research Officer in the School of Public Health. Eryn recently completed her PhD, which used systems dynamics modelling to understand the drivers of bat-human conflict in Queensland.
Darsy Darssan is an Accredited Professional Statistician® (PStat®) and a Fellow of Higher Education Academy (FHEA). Darsy is interested in developing or extending statistical methodologies to solve problems that arise in real-world data analysis and data collection in Biomedical research.
Dr Nicholas Osborne Osborne, BSc(Hons), MAgSc, PhD is an epidemiologist and toxicologist with research interests in using environmental epidemiology to examine aetiology and pathological pathways of disease. He has worked on a range of projects examining environmental exposures and health outcomes including exposure to metals, pollen, mould, chronic exposures to low levels of chemicals, pesticide and cyanotoxins. He also has experience examining how exposure to the environment may increase health and wellbeing (green/bluespace and solar irradiance and vitamin D).
I am a Senior Lecturer who specialises in researching social-ecological systems. I have strong numerical modelling skills (participatory modelling, system dynamics, agent-based, Bayesian inference, Bayesian networks, generalised additive modelling) through a range of software (R, Stella Architect, Vensim, Berkeley Madonna, Netica, WinBUGS). Coding: I also have strong skills in object oriented (C#, Objective-C, Swift, Python, Javascript in P5), functional (R) and procedural (Basic) coding. I apply these modelling and coding skills to design, develop and apply decision support systems for addressing complex problems.
Dr Satyamurthy Anuradha is the Medical Director in Public Health Medicine at Metro South Health Health Service.
Eryn Wright
Russell Richards
11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Thursday 10th July, 2025