Pervasive Monitoring of Public Health and Well-Being in Urban Areas with Blue-Green Solutions

The urban environment seems to affect the citizens' health. The implementation of Blue-Green Solutions (BGS) in urban areas have been used to promote public health and citizens well-being. The aim of this paper is to present the development of an mHealth app for monitoring patients and citizens health status in areas where BGS will be applied. The "HEART by BioAsssist" application could be used as a health and other data collection tool as well as an "intelligent assistant" to monitor and promote patient's physical activity in areas with Blue-Green Solutions.

Quantifying Citizens' Well-Being in Areas with Natural Based Solutions Using Mobile Computing

Urban planners, architects and civil engineers are integrating Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) to address contemporary environmental, social, health and economic challenges. Many studies claim that NBS are poised to improve citizens' well-being in urban areas. NBS can also benefit Public Health, as they can contribute to optimising environmental parameters (such as urban heat island effects, floods, etc.), as well as to the reduction of diseases, as for example cardiovascular ones and the overall mortality rate. In addition, the usage of mobile health (mHealth) solutions has been broadly applied to support citizens' well-being as they can offer monitoring of their physical and physiological status and promote a healthier lifestyle. The aim of this paper is to present the specifications, the design and the development of a mobile app for monitoring citizens' well-being in areas where NBS have been applied. The users' physical activity and vital signs are recorded by wearable devices and the users' locations are recorded by the proposed mobile application. All collected data are transferred to the cloud platform where data management mechanisms aggregate data from different sources for combined analysis. The mobile application is currently available for Android and iOS devices and it is compatible with most smart devices and wearables. The "euPOLIS by BioAssist" application can be used as a health and other data collection tool to investigate citizen's well-being improvement in areas with NBS.