Climate change is established to be unequivocal and has been unanimously identified as one of
biggest threats to health worldwide. Greenhouse gas emissions are the main driver of these global
rising temperatures, affecting health and mortality worldwide. Currently almost half of the global
population lives in urban areas, usually characterized by their higher environmental hazard burden
(e.g., elevated levels of heat and air pollution). With future projections of both population growth and
climate change, exposure to environmental hazards and subsequent health risks are only expected to
increase. For Belgium, one of Europe’s most urbanized countries, previous climate change-related
research has focused on health- and mortality associations in relation to heat and has been mostly
conducted at country- and citywide level using classical regression methods. Evidence for the Belgian
context is still scarce regarding climate change-related health impacts at high spatiotemporal
resolution. The main aim of this project is to evaluate for the first time in Belgium climate changerelated (cause-specific) excess mortality attributed to temperature under different future climate and
population projections at high spatiotemporal scale for the entire country

Runtime: 2024 - 2027