HEALTH-15: Health- and Exposure-Intelligent Mobility Transitions for Equitable 15-Minute Cities

HEALTH-15 is a proposed DUT Call 2026 project concept focused on integrating health, environmental exposure and spatial equity into sustainable urban mobility and 15-minute-city transitions.

The project will examine how alternative mobility and accessibility scenarios may influence travel patterns, population exposure to air pollution, health outcomes and inequalities between neighbourhoods and population groups. Rather than assessing mobility interventions only through transport performance or emissions, HEALTH-15 aims to incorporate population health and equity directly into urban-transition decision making.

The proposed approach combines mobility and accessibility modelling, air-quality and exposure assessment, GIS/spatial analysis, Health Impact Assessment (HIA), demographic and health data, and living-lab implementation. Established epidemiological concentration-response functions can be combined with local population, baseline health, environmental and mobility data to estimate the health consequences of alternative urban-mobility scenarios.

Potential outputs include scenario-specific changes in exposure and health burden, spatial identification of vulnerable populations, assessment of distributional effects, and transferable evidence to support municipalities and urban authorities in designing healthier and more equitable mobility transitions.

We are particularly seeking partners with expertise or implementation capacity in: • urban mobility and transport modelling

• 15-minute-city accessibility analysis

• municipalities and urban living labs

• GIS and spatial equity

• air-quality monitoring or modelling

• active mobility and behavioural change

• urban planning and co-creation

• environmental and public health

• urban data platforms and decision-support systems

My contribution focuses on environmental epidemiology, air pollution and health, exposure assessment, Health Impact Assessment, BenMAP-CE, GIS/spatial epidemiology, environmental risk assessment and scenario-based health evaluation.

The consortium is currently under development, and we welcome discussions with universities, municipalities, research institutes, mobility organisations and other eligible DUT partners interested in shaping the proposal.