SynthEco Digital Platform generates synthetic ecosystems (SEs) that integrate census data with results from local and nationwide population-based cohorts that represent various stages of the life course of individuals in the context of diverse environmental factors. Traditionally, population-wide data collection efforts are very difficult to execute due to the level of recruiting, cost, and methodological reliability. As a result, cohort studies are used to collect detailed data. Additionally, they may lack any representation of real-world environments such as households, schools, transit, workplaces, health facilities, and food environment. This has led to the development of SEs.
SEs produces a dataset that includes a virtual representation for each household and person within a geographic area, allowing for exploration of life-course effects of iterative interactions with the environment. Importantly, our current proposal will generate a platform for future testing of interventions (e.g. simulating the effect of public policies) that can inform the health care system and policy makers about the best Canadian scenario for healthy growth and development, long-term well-being, and improved human capital. The city of Montreal is used as the geo-spatial and socio-cultural test bed by integrating existing digital architecture, census data, and population-based discovery cohorts.
A collaboration between the Silveira Lab, and Prof. Laurette Dubé (McGill University) and Shawn Brown (Pittsburg Supercomputing Center), SEc operationalizes government, private and academic research for population level urban and intervention planning by combining various disparate data collection efforts into a population-level, geographically explicit representation. It will be built upon the concept of a Synthetic Ecosystem (SE), a statistically representative virtual population embedded within a real-world environment. SEs serve as a key information technology for combining disparate data sources into a realistic, coherent whole, free of privacy concerns. They can be pivotal in planning population level health interventions in three ways:
- filling knowledge gaps that plague the use of cohort studies in population-level intervention and urban planning;
- elucidating inequities in services throughout a population, and;
- aiding in developing and validating new measures of population health.
SEc will allow planners and researchers to create, visualize and download their simulated ecosystem, and will provide a general capability to operationalize cohort studies at the full population level by placing persons in a grounded real-world environment support decision making in urban and health interventions planning. SynthEco will empower more targeted urban planning and population-level health interventions such as where to place services, where to target health interventions, and how to increase equity in services. Urban planners and researchers can use this tool to provide granular, geographically and temporally resolved representations of the health and characteristics of their populations.
