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AIMS: We provide an overview of nationwide environmental data available for Denmark and its linkage potentials to individual-level records with the aim of promoting research on the potential impact of the local surrounding environment on human health.BACKGROUND: Researchers in Denmark have unique opportunities for conducting large population-based studies treating the entire Danish population as one big, open and dynamic cohort based on nationally complete population and health registries. So far, most research in this area has utilised individual- and family-level information to study the clustering of disease in families, comorbidities, risk of, and prognosis after, disease onset, and social gradients in disease risk. Linking environmental data in time and space to individuals enables novel possibilities for studying the health effects of the social, built and physical environment.METHODS: We describe the possible linkage between individuals and their local surrounding environment to establish the exposome - that is, the total environmental exposure of an individual over their life course.CONCLUSIONS: The currently available nationwide longitudinal environmental data in Denmark constitutes a valuable and globally rare asset that can help explore the impact of the exposome on human health.

Overcrowding in densely populated urban areas is increasingly becoming an issue for mental health disorders. Yet, only few studies have examined the association between overcrowding in cities and physiological stress responses. Thus, this study employed wearable sensors (a wearable camera, an Empatica E4 wristband and a smartphone-based GPS) to assess the association between overcrowding and human physiological stress response in four types of urban contexts (green space, transit space, commercial space, and blue space). A case study with 26 participants was conducted in Salzburg, Austria. We used Mask R-CNN to detect elements related to overcrowding such as human crowds, sitting facilities, vehicles and bikes from first-person video data collected by wearable cameras, and calculated a change score (CS) to assess human physiological stress response based on galvanic skin response (GSR) and skin temperature from the physiological data collected by the wristband, then this study used statistical and spatial analysis to assess the association between the change score and the above elements. The results demonstrate the feasibility of using sensor-based measurement and quantitative analysis to investigate the relationship between human stress and overcrowding in relation to different urban elements. The findings of this study indicate the importance of considering human crowds, sitting facilities, vehicles and bikes to assess the impact of overcrowding on human stress at street level.

Additional file 2: Table S1. comparation between GWR model and Ordinary least-squares (OLS) model.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-sjp-10.1177_14034948231178076 for Perspectives on environment and health research in Denmark by Henriette T. Horsdal, Marianne G. Pedersen, Jörg Schullehner, Cecilie S. Østergaard, John J. Mcgrath, Esben Agerbo, Allan Timmermann, Ane Marie Closter, Jørgen Brandt, Jesper H. Christensen, Lise M. Frohn, Camilla Geels, Matthias Ketzel, Jibran Khan, Pia V. Ørby, Yulia Olsen, Gregor Levin, Jens-Christian Svenning, Kristine Engemann, Steen Gyldenkærne, Birgitte Hansen, Ole Hertel, Clive E. Sabel, Christian Erikstrup, Torben Sigsgaard and Carsten B. Pedersen in Scandinavian Journal of Public Health

Cities' increasing population and housing density have been associated with a higher risk of mental health problems, such as stress. This study employed wearable, personalised sensors (a wearable camera, Empatica 4 wristband and a smartphone-based GPS) to assess the association between overcrowding and human physiological stress response in four kinds of urban contexts (water area, transit area, green area, commercial area). This paper conducted a case study in Salzburg, Austria and recruited 26 participants. We used Mask R-CNN to detect human crowds, sitting facilities, vehicles and bikes from imagery and calculated a change score to assess human physiological stress responses based on galvanic skin response (GSR) and skin temperature from the wristband. Afterwards, we used statistical and spatial analysis to assess the relationships between the change score and the number of human crowds, sitting facilities, vehicles and bikes. This paper confirmed that natural contexts could mitigate the adverse effects of overcrowding and explored areas where human crowds, sitting facilities, vehicles and bikes are positively associated with humans' physiological stress responses. Lastly, we proposed urban design approaches to minimise overcrowding and benefit humans' mental health.

Public open space (POS) plays a significant role in fostering human health and wellbeing in cities. A major limitation of current research on POS and health is that there is little attention on the role of various urban features on people's mental health, in different urban context. This study employed wearable, personalised sensors (a wearable camera, Empatica 4 wristband and a GPS device) to measure human physiological responses to urban indicators, objectively. To do this, we selected six kinds of public open space (water area, transit area, green area, commercial area, motor traffic area and mixed office and residential area) and recruited 86 participants for an experimental study. Next, we detected urban features by using Microsoft Cognitive Services (MCS) and calculated a change score to assess human physiological stress responses based on galvanic skin response (GSR) and skin temperature from the wristband. Lastly, we applied a multi-method to examine the relationship between urban indicators and human physiological stress responses. The findings show that urban flow (vehicles, bikes and people), waterbodies, greenery and places to sit are associated with the changes of human physiological stress response. The findings indicate that the type of urban context may confound the effect of green and blue urban features; i.e., the effect on physiological stress response can be positive or negative depending on the context. The paper highlights the relevance of considering urban context in research on associations between urban features and stress response.

Urban green and blue spaces not only provide environmental benefits to the quality of city life, but also generate positive health effects for people living in cities. Recent studies advocate for the need to evaluate the therapeutic value of urban green and blue spaces. To achieve this goal, this study aims to measure how human respond to urban “green” and “blue” elements in different kinds of urban environment. We conducted a field experiment in Copenhagen municipality from June to September 2021.The experiment entailed using FrontRow wearable lifestyle camera, GPS tracker and Empatica 4 wristband as a sensor package to capture personal urban exposures and localised personal physiological responses to the urban environments. In this field experiment, volunteers (k=85) wore three sensors and walked through six urban sites (waterfront area/transit area/greenery area /commercial area/traffic area/residential area). On each site, the volunteers had a 5-minute rest followed by a 15-minute self-leading walk. In the end, our experiment collected images representing personal exposures to urban elements and the corresponding physiological responses. Focusing on the exposures to “Green” and “Blue” features, we took advantage of Microsoft API of cognitive service to detect the existence of urban “green” (e.g., tree/grass/flower/garden/bush) and urban “blue” (e.g., water/lake/fountain) in the collected images. Further, we analysed the spatial relationship between the distributions of “Green/Blue” features and human’s body responses in the six sites. Our findings indicate that the existence of “Green” and “blue” elements can effectively decrease the stress perceived from the surroundings. The study provides novel insights to investigating human health in different urban environments and highlights the value of green and blue spaces in promoting good health.