EDEN

Preparedness and capacity building for emerging epidemics

Emerging Diseases in a Changing European Environment

EC contribution: : € 11 500 000
Duration: : 60 months
Starting date: : 01/11/2004
Instrument: : IP
Keywords: : Emerging disease, rodent-borne diseases, malaria, leishmaniasis, tick-borne encephalitis, West-Nile fever, Rift Valley fever, rodents, mosquitoes, sandflies, ticks, ecosystem, remote sensing, mathematical modelling, biology, ecology, risk map, public health, early-warning system, Europe, biome, climate change, environmental change
Project Number: : GOCE-CT-2003-010284
Web-site: : http://www.eden-fp6project.net

Summary:

EDEN gathers 49 public and private research institutes from 24 countries with the combined experience and skills to reach the project's common goals. The ecological and geographical diversity of the project area covers all relevant European ecosystems: from the polar circle in the north to the Mediterranean basin and its link with West Africa in the south, and from Portugal in the west to the Danube delta in the east.

EDEN is organised into a series of 'vertical' sub-projects, led and managed by internationally recognised experts, and linked together by a series of integrative 'horizontal' activities that include biodiversity monitoring, environmental change detection, disease modelling, remote sensing and image interpretation, information and communication.

The leader of each group (sub-project or integrative team) is directly responsible for central management and sits on the steering committee. Relevant management decisions are taken at each level with maximal use of e-communication, on the principle of no reply constituting an agreement.

Problem:

In recent years, several vector-borne, parasitic or zoonotic diseases have (re-)emerged and spread in Europe and elsewhere with major health, ecological, socio-economic and political consequences. At present, little is known about the causes of such changes and the relative contributions to them of human-induced landscape changes, changing activity patterns, the breakdown of traditional control methods and global and local changes in climate. Europe must anticipate, prevent and control new emergences to avoid major societal and economical crises. EDEN offers a unique opportunity to prepare for uncertainties about the future of the European environment by exploring the impact of environmental and other changes on human health.

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Aim:

The goal of EDEN is to identify, evaluate and catalogue European ecosystems, environmental and socioeconomic conditions linked to global change - including both abiotic (e.g. climatic) and biotic factors - which can influence the spatial and temporal distribution and dynamics of pathogenic agents. A coordinated European approach has been adopted to provide predictive emergence and spread models including global and regional preventive, early warning, surveillance, and monitoring tools and scenarios. Such tools will have a major impact on improved EU policy development and decision-making, both for national and international agencies like the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) (Stockholm, Sweden).

Results:

The collaborative approach allowed the coordinated collection of field and public health data in a wide range of ecosystems.

Methodological developments were made to model these data with environmental variables remotely sensed at various resolution scales, or characterising biodiversity. After the identification of the main risk factors involved in vector dynamics and/or disease emergence and dissemination, major conceptual, biological and mathematical advances were made to step from statistical to biological models, and from specific to generic models.

Up to April 2008, around 100 papers reporting these findings were published or submitted to journals. Many more papers are expected before the end of the project because some field studies are not completed yet and important results on modelling and integration will soon be available.

Moreover, the first wave of PhD theses is being defended. An important result of the project is the establishment of a network of PhD students and post-docs sharing common methods and tools, and interacting. A PhDmeeting is organised during each annual meeting with the selection of a PhD award and a PhD representative. A website was set up and maintained for these PhD students (http:// ergodd.zoo.ox.ac.uk/edenphd), with a great deal of practical information, job offers, etc. At present, more than 60 students are involved in this network, thus preparing a strong community of European, Middle East and African scientists in the domain of emerging vector-borne diseases related to environmental changes.

To cement the EDEN scientific community, open workshops were organised on laboratory diagnosis, geographical information systems, processing and analysis of remotely sensed data, statistical and mathematical modelling. The next workshop, on the R0 concept, will be organised in Paris in October 2008.

A strategy document and several concept notes were written to summarise and promote original concepts, methods and tools that have been developed within the frame of the project: risk maps, strategies and scenarios to monitor and manage vector-borne emerging diseases, etc. Follow-up projects have been designed and awarded in competitive calls (the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), ECDC, the European Space Agency (ESA)).

Potential applications:

The project will assist in the creation of:

risk maps of the European ecosystems for a wide range of vector-borne diseases;
disease surveillance/monitoring and earlywarning systems to help public health agencies and decision makers in targeting surveillance and control of emerging vector-borne diseases in Europe and the Mediterranean basin.

Coordinator:

Renaud Lancelot
CIRAD - Département Systèmes Biologiques
Campus international de Baillarguet - TA A-DIR / B
34398 Montpellier Cedex 5, France
renaud.lancelot@cirad.fr

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