Faculty’s researchers in the BlueAdapt project.
BlueAdapt is a European research project responding to the climate-based health risks of pathogens in coastal waters. The project is exploring how pathogens including bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites move through the aquatic environment. They will assess how pathogens could be affected by climate change and review the most effective policy initiatives for reducing emerging health risks.
The Principal Investigator of the project is prof. Mikołaj Czajkowski. The researchers from the Faculty involved in the project are: Milan Ščasný, Ph.D., Wiktor Budziński, Ph.D., Katarzyna Zagórska, M.A. and Wojciech Zawadzki, M.A.
BlueAdapt is a European research project investigating the climate-based health risks of pathogens found in coastal waters. Climate change and environmental pollution could be making waterborne pathogens (such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites) more dangerous in ways that we don’t yet fully understand. To prevent illness and disease, we need to know how people are and could be exposed to different pathogens in coastal environments.
BlueAdapt has been funded by the European Union and UK Research and Innovation to help Europe adapt to emerging health risks. We will investigate how climate change is enabling pathogens to evolve and multiply and how people are at risk. Our findings will help to inform the most effective ways for Europe to adapt through policy and innovation.
The research team from the Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw will investigate how information regarding health-risks can change individuals’ preferences and behavior. The study site will concern the Gulf of Gdańsk and the Vistula Lagoon. By controlling for individuals’ existing knowledge of risks and corresponding behavior, the team will test the effectiveness of information-provision interventions (e.g., general information regarding health risks for different groups of users, up-to-date spatially-disaggregated information on water quality, and possible averting behavior). The main focus will be on the effectiveness of different information interventions, which will be tested in terms of content and method (using the randomized control trial methods) for posterior information, preferences, and behavior, and potential policy interventions will be evaluated via cost-benefit analyses.
BlueAdapt is a partnership between 12 institutions across 8 European countries. Partners include the Basque Centre for Climate Change, University of Exeter, Charles University, University of Warsaw, University of Galway, Deltares, CMCC, EuroHealthNet, Bangor University, Istituto Superiore di Sanita, University of the Basque Country and ThenTryThis.
BlueAdapt is part of the European climate change and health cluster and is funded under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.
More information about the project is available on the website: www.blueadapt.eu and on Twitter (https://twitter.com/BlueAdaptEU) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/blueadapt/).
