
The research project “València: green, healthy and sustainable city” held a meeting on December 5th in which key advances were presented and the next steps to be taken to measure the impact of sustainability on the health of its inhabitants were defined. The main objective of the initiative is to assess how urban sustainability affects the health of València's citizens, generating a replicable model that can be applied in other cities around the world, especially those that are part of the European Green Capital Network.
The research is based on the collection and analysis of large volumes of geographic, satellite-based and artificial intelligence-driven data, which will be obtained in collaboration with the Institute on Robotics and Information and Communication Technologies (IRTIC) of the University of Valencia, to identify patterns that allow for the evaluation of sustainable policies implemented in the city and to establish a relationship with the impact they have on the health of the inhabitants.
The meeting was attended by Antonio García Celda, general director of València European Green Capital; Juan Cardona, general director of Kiwa España; Rosa Valenzuela, director of the R&D&I area of Kiwa España; David Torres, technical director of the R&D&I area, Carlos Martínez, head of the Health Research and Innovation Service of the Regional Ministry of Health of the Generalitat Valenciana; Juan José Martínez Durá, director of the LISITT group of IRTIC at the University of Valencia; Daniel Nieto, coordinator of Valencia European Green Capital; Elena Rocher, expert in design, development and management of health innovation projects at Las Naves; Adrián Martí, research support technician at Kiwa España and Mar Viguer, research transfer and communication technician at Kiwa España.
According to Rosa Valenzuela, director of R&D&I at Kiwa España, at the start of the meeting, “our health and that of our planet depends on our cities”. In this sense, she indicated, the project aims to highlight the binomial between health and environment, two key elements for the sustainability of cities and the urban life of the future.
One of the innovative aspects of the initiative is the creation of its own model to measure the impacts of sustainability on health, which has not existed until now in the context of the European Green Capital. This standardised process generated by Kiwa, according to the general director of València European Green Capital, Antonio García Celda, aims to “be a tool for the future to measure and demonstrate how sustainability in cities improves the health of citizens”.
The mODS scheme, which measures the impact of sustainability on the territory, and the GRI standard, which analyses environmental, social and economic impacts, the European Green Capital indicators and various ISO standards approved and under development applied to cities, has been established as a starting point. The aim is to demonstrate that Valencia is a green, healthy, sustainable and smart city.
The project focuses on 12 key indicators, such as air quality, circular economy, sustainable urban mobility and climate change mitigation, and 6 factors related to health in an urban environment, such as pollution, water, noise, temperature and green spaces. In addition, 29 health indicators have been identified that are directly linked to these factors and that allow correlating the prevalence of diseases with the level of urban sustainability. In the next phases of the project, the impact of the actions on health will be assessed.