Event Highlights
Leopoldina Event: How Do We Want to Live Tomorrow? Perspectives on Water Management in Urban Regions – Workshop and Science Policy Report, November 2016 in Essen
More than half of the world’s population now lives in urban regions, and according to estimates by the United Nations, that number will grow by a further 2.5 billion by the year 2050, which will put massive pressure on local water resources. This scenario was the subject of the German- Brazilian workshop organised by Leopoldina, the Academia Brasileira de Ciências and the ZWU in November 2016. Young German and Brazilian scientists identified and discussed future research topics and questions relevant to urban water management. The findings were published in a science policy report that presents options for responsible management of waste water, rainwater and pollution. For these challenges the scientists formulated concrete research questions, the answers to which they believe will contribute to sustainable integrated management of water catchment areas in urban spaces and thereby create the basis for better quality of life and health in cities and safeguard the environment. To do this will require above all an improvement in the flow of information between the relevant actors, greater involvement of the public in decision-making processes, and close links with city planning.
“Metropolis – Gesundheit anders denken” (A different way of thinking about health), Annual Conference of the German Society for Social Medicine and Prevention (DGSMP), 2016 in Essen
The 52nd Annual Conference of the DGSMP “Metropolis – Gesundheit anders denken” took place in Essen from 14 to 16 September 2016, organised by the conference president Prof. Susanne Moebus, Centre for Urban Epidemiology. Some 450 speakers and guests from science, teaching and practice presented current research findings from different perspectives. Discussion of the relationship between health and urban space in terms of health-promoting living environments, health care and social justice was one of the central themes of the conference.
The scientific agenda included contributions from health promotion and prevention in local communities, asylum, migration, and child and adolescent health. Big data, digital networking and the smart city were another cluster of themes during the conference.
Events were held in different formats at attractive venues in the Ruhr region and looked at “The smart city – does the smart city concept help health-promoting urban development?”; discussions considered whether the smart city can solve existing urban health problems or whether technological development happens separately and creates new problems or exacerbates old ones. In “Art meets Science”, a discussion session held in Café Central at the Grillo Theater in Essen, video extracts with scenes from the play “Big Data” were shown and discussed from different perspectives with the director and scientists from informatics, neurology and medical sociology. These alternative event formats gave attendees an interdisciplinary impression of current developments, such as digital technology and its effects on health; at the same time, and in line with the conference theme of thinking about health in different ways, they also gave representatives from public health, urban planning and medical sociology a chance to discuss how a city should be planned and (re)built so that it offers residents the best possible opportunities for their health.