The CIDACS Climate and Environmental Platform (CIDACS-Clima): A data resource to study climate and health

As a large middle-income country with extraordinary geographic diversity and stark social inequalities, Brazil offers a unique living laboratory for identifying specific factors that may modify and mediate the impacts of climate change on health.

To generate new knowledge on the links between climate and health that is currently not available from existing dissipated and unlinked resources and to inform mitigation and adaptation responses, this proposal seeks to develop a new CIDACS Climate and Environmental Platform.

Our primary aim is to integrate geo-referenced climatic data (e.g., hydrometeorological and remote sensing satellite-derived indicators) from Brazil in an accessible platform that will be interoperable with the existing nationwide health and socioeconomic data linked in the 100 Million Brazilian Cohort (N=131,697,800 low-income individuals, 2001-2018) and the CIDACS Birth Cohort (N=28,631,390 maternal-child dyads, 2001-2018).

To achieve this aim, we are requesting resources to: (i) strengthen CIDACS’ computational infrastructure including high-performance computing clusters, (ii) bolster CIDACS’ technical capacity related to data linkage and interoperability, machine learning, and bias assessment, (iii) develop the CIDACS Climate and Environmental Platform data resource, (iv) conduct hypothesis-driven proof-of- concept studies to demonstrate the platform’s utility and validity, and (v) expand CIDACS’ public interface and governance mechanisms to facilitate ethical data access.