Economics - Environmental and Health

To find and include evidence to improve how cost is assigned to health outcomes that are linked with the urban environment.

We will conduct an extensive critical evaluation of the current literature (focused on quality, uncertainty, validity of method).  We will use the information from the literature to make a database modelling tool that will provide information about the cost of health impacts resulting from the urban environment. This will build on previous work (Black et al. (2018)). The cost analysis database will incorporate academic and grey literature and will provide a resource that allows the user – e.g. planners, developers, housebuilders – to quantify the links between the urban environment and health as much as possible for the contemporary UK context.

The value given to these health impacts will use a combination of both market and non-market economic evidence to estimate the cost components of health impacts, i.e. health treatment costs, costs of missing work and the pain and suffering associated with them. This will enable costs to be estimated for a broader and more comprehensive range of health outcomes, linked to urban development, than exists to date (which has primarily focused on the air quality context (Williams et al. (2018)). The work will also identify who bears the health costs – such as the NHS, employers, individuals, and their families.

Existing tools used by decision-makers, enhanced by the data generated in this WP, will be used to estimate the cost-benefit of individual urban development design decisions and policy-level decisions. Costs associated with these developments and policies will be derived from the range of stakeholders involved in the project and will be based on publicly available market data.