Title: Social sensing of health and wellbeing impacts from pollen and air pollution
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Air pollution and airborne pollen can have significant impacts on health and wellbeing. Health effects can be severe; for example, people with hayfever may also suffer from asthma, with complications sometimes leading to hospitalisation. However, most cases - while unpleasant and disruptive to the affected individual - are not severe enough to require formal medical treatment. These milder cases are not currently recorded or identified. This masks the true extent of these health conditions and their impacts on quality of life, making them hard to study and to manage. Meanwhile, the digital revolution is creating huge datasets that can provide rich information. We have successfully pioneered a "social sensing" methodology that uses social media data to detect and locate environmental hazards. Social sensing involves several stages: data harvesting, data cleaning (e.g. filtering for relevance and removing spam accounts), event detection, and data visualisation. One of the most exciting opportunities for social sensing is provision of real-time information, allowing accurate monitoring and early warning of emerging hazards. Social sensing has great potential for tracking pollen, air pollution and associated health impacts such as asthma and hayfever. This new source of data can fill an important information gap and bring benefits to public sector organisations and charities working to improve public health. Outputs can be easily provided to the general public through the web, to help asthma and hayfever sufferers manage their conditions more effectively. However, social sensing also raises ethical issues. Collection and analysis of social media data without user consent may be seen as a breach of privacy, especially where the data concern a sensitive topic such as health and/or wellbeing. Furthermore, since social media users are not necessarily representative of wider society, it is possible that decisions or policies based on social media data will unfairly benefit some sections of society at the expense of others. This project at University of Exeter will evaluate a social sensing prototype focused on pollen, air pollution, asthma and hayfever. The prototype will be assessed for use by several partner organisations working on environment and public health issues: Met Office, Public Health England and AsthmaUK. An integrated ethical investigation will directly address the privacy and fairness concerns raised by social sensing. The project has three aims: (1) Create a prototype social sensing platform to track health and wellbeing impacts of pollen and air pollution; (2) Work with partners to evaluate the usefulness of social sensing in a variety of real-world scenarios; and (3) Investigate ethical concerns around social sensing, in particular, fairness and privacy. These aims will be delivered by achieving four specific objectives: (1) Engage end-users and stakeholders to co-design project goals; (2) Develop a prototype social sensing tool focused on pollen, air pollution, asthma and hayfever; (3) Evaluate the prototype in multiple real-world scenarios identified by partner organisations; and (4) Use academic literature, public engagement and surveys to assess ethical concerns around privacy and fairness. The project team brings together an interdisciplinary mix of academics from University of Exeter, policy partners from Public Health England (PHE), Met Office and AsthmaUK, and members of the public from the Health and Environment Public Engagement (HEPE) group. Expertise in computer science, environment and human health will be combined to solve real-world problems. Outputs will include social sensing software (free for anyone to use) and a comprehensive Case Study Report summarising all project findings. Overall this project will create an essential evidence base to guide future use of social sensing in the context of environment and public health.


Research activity codes: 7.1 INDIVIDUAL CARE NEEDS;8.3 POLICY, ETHICS AND RESEARCH GOVERNANCE
Health categories: INFLAMMATORY AND IMMUNE SYSTEM;RESPIRATORY;GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE