The European Environment and Epidemiology (E3) Network

It is widely believed that global climate and environmental changes pose a threat to human health. One such threat is through the altered emergence, spread, and transmission patterns of infectious diseases, whether vector-borne, food- and water-borne, or otherwise. Unfortunately, epidemiological and environmental data are often not linked, and although the evidence-base has been rapidly growing, significant research hurdles still exist.

One of the biggest hurdles relates to obtaining the wide range of environmental and epidemiological geospatial datasets that are required for modelling the potential impacts of environmental and societal changes on infectious disease epidemiology. This has prevented public health and environmental agencies and scientists from gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the multi-causal pathways that drive environmental and epidemiological change.

With this in mind, ECDC established the E3 Network to foster and promote EU-wide research into environmental infectious disease epidemiology. The E3 Network is a collaborative network through which E3 Network users and partners can exchange data and information on the topic. Through the E3 Network, ECDC aims to promote activity in this field by collecting and distributing climatic, environmental, demographic and infectious disease data that have been produced by a wide range of primarily European research projects, institutes, and government agencies.

Through the E3 Geoportal, reports, maps, and geospatial datasets will be made available by ECDC to any interested E3 User. E3 Partners will furthermore be able to upload their own reports and datasets, thereby contributing to the exchange of knowledge in Europe about the ways in which environmental changes are affecting infectious disease transmission.

The E3 Network provides a platform for collaborative working in advanced analysis, processing, co-relation, reporting and monitoring of data that will support the rapid detection of emerging environmental public health threats. It aims to promote the exchange and sharing of the products of this collaborate effort through its Geoportal service. The resulting knowledge gained would help public health agencies and communities prepare for both short- and long-term developments in infectious disease spread.

To strengthen the capacity to promote the E3 concept, ECDC is implementing an information resource hub designed to provide timely access to eco-climatic determinants, vector distribution, and infectious disease incidence data that are collected by a variety of sources. x

The data hub will serve as a reference point for supporting data exchanges and scientific collaborations between member states, researchers, and other authorised users across geographical and political boundaries in the European Community, with particular interest in the area of climatic change adaptation and emerging disease threats.

The E3 resource base will promote Europe-wide quality standards for environmental data by leveraging knowledge resources, and it will enrich and increase the usage and availability of feature-rich datasets and outputs of scientific analysis in the focus area of climate change adaptation and public health impacts.

The overarching objective of establishing the E3 network is to permit Europe-wide analyses of the impending risks to infectious disease spread due to environmental change. The result of these analyses then will be disseminated to policy makers, public health practitioners, European Union and international agencies, other governmental sectors, and non-governmental organisations.

The E3 Geoportal was built in collaboration with the EDEN project Integrated Project of the 6th FP funded by the European Commission  under the Research DG (Emerging Diseases in a changing European eNvironment, CORDIS webpage and  Project website), which aimed to identify and catalogue European ecosystems and environmental conditions which can influence the spread of infectious disease. The EDEN project developed a wide range of geospatial data that was hosted by the EDEN data repository. In recognition of the high value of this data to the European research community, ECDC decided to continue to host all of this data once the EDEN project was completed.
Today, ECDC continues to collaborate with the EU research project, which focuses on the biology and control of vector-borne infections in Europe EDENext (CORDIS webpage and Project website).
More generally, the E3 network is working to continue to promote the exchange of knowledge and expertise from across Europe, in line with the ECDC mission to identify, assess and communicate current and emerging threats to human health posed by infectious diseases (ECDC mission).