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Conferences

Habitat Project at ENBEL 2025: Exploring Links Between Climate and Respiratory Health

The Habitat Project was represented at the second edition of the Connecting Health and Climate
Change Conference (ENBEL 2025), held from 16–18 October 2025 in Tallinn, Estonia.
Our researchers Thomas Brenner and Saeed A. Khan presented their latest findings on the relationship between meteorological conditions and respiratory health outcomes:

• Meteorological conditions and the risk of community-acquired pneumonia – The vulnerability of people with Asthma (Thomas Brenner)
• Temporal structure of the impact of meteorological conditions on pneumonia hospitalizations in Germany (Saeed A. Khan)

These studies are part of the Habitat project’s ongoing efforts to integrate climate, environmental, and health data to support evidence-based public health responses to climate change. 
We are grateful to our contributors Barbara C. Weckler, Max Kutzinski, Bernd Schmeck, Ann-Christine Link, Christoph Reudenbach, Jörg Bendix, Jan Rupp, Martin Witzenrath, Gernot Rohde, Mathias W. Pletz, Wilhelm Bertrams, and the CAPNETZ Study Group.
  

HABITAT project at AK-Klima 2025

The HABITAT project was represented at the 43rd Annual Meeting of AK-Klima 2025, hosted by Institute of Geography at the Friedrich-Alexander-University (FAU) Erlangen-Nürnberg at the Brombachsee from September 25 to 27, 2025.
Sheetabh Gaurav and Paulina Grigusova had a poster presentation to present modelling and data challenges associated with health risk forecasting based on environmental datasets. Based on a theoretical dataset, three modelling approaches (logistic regression, logistic regression with splines and XGBoost) were evaluated and compared to assess how well the model handles common data
challenges typically encountered in real-world environmental and medical datasets. They highlighted the importance of addressing data quality and resolution in both model development and environmental data processing.
Click here to go to the Website AK-Klima 2025

10th Nordic Geographers Meeting in Copenhagen on June 27th 2024

Prof. Dr. Sören Becker, a PI of the HABITAT Project, together with Dr. Susann Schäfer (University of Jena), organized a session on "Human Geographies of Health and Well-Being in the Context of Climate Change" at the 10th Nordic Geographers Meeting in Copenhagen on June 27th. Sören presented their study on perceptions of well-being within the context of climate change, aiming to develop a typology of urban citizens based on a household survey conducted in Marburg. Ann-Christine Link, a PhD student in the HABITAT project, presented three papers resulting from the HABITAT project, focusing on the interlinkage between weather and pneumonia hospitalizations in Germany, as well as the role of personal characteristics and comorbidities. Other contributors covered related issues in Italy, Spain and Colombia. The session attracted many participants and led to in-depth discussions on human geographic perspectives on this relevant topic.

European Geophysical Union (EGU) Conference 15. - 19.04.2024 in Vienna - Lecture by Ann-Christine Link and Michaela Schütz

Ann-Christine Link and Michaela Vorndran participated at the European Geopyhsical Union (EGU) Conference from 15th until 19th of April 2024 in Vienna. With 20,979 participants and 1044 sessions, the EGU is one of the largest geoscientific conferences in the world, covering topics such as "Climate and Health". A full 57% of the contributions at this conference came from Early Career Scientists, including Michaela and Ann-Christine, who successfully represented the HABITAT team. Michaela presented the research results of her doctoral thesis on the short-term prediction of fog events using machine learning models. She has been a member of the HABITAT team since March and can now profitably contribute her knowledge to the development of the model behind the HABIAT health app. Ann-Christine presented the impact of weather effects on pneumonia cases in Germany. Pneumonia is an acute or chronic inflammation of the lung tissue that occurs in COPD patients and whose severity is influenced by the current weather conditions. COPD patients form one of a total of three groups that are to receive individualized warnings via the planned health app as part of HABITAT in order to reduce episodes of illness in the best case scenario and make everyday life with the disease easier for them. The presentations met with great interest and were each attended by around 100 participants. There was a lively exchange with many interested scientists to discuss the results of Ann-Christine and Michaela, HABITAT and the topic of "climate and health" in general. 

64th Congress by DGP 20. - 23.03.2024 in Mannheim - Lecture Prof. Dr. Schmeck

The conference's programme (PDF) can be found here.