2015-10-19 (IPMA)
The Portuguese Institute for the Sea and the Atmosphere (IPMA) and the National Institute of Health Ricardo Jorge (INSA-RJ), in conjunction with other entities, will implement this winter a pilot test in the districts of Lisbon and Oporto, which allows to predict the daily risk of minimum temperatures on population mortality.
This pilot test arises from the FRIESA project (Extreme Cold on Health) from which IPMA was the proponent institution, INSA the participating institution and FCT the funding body.
The FRIESA project had as main goal the development of statistical models for the prediction of mortality associated with extreme low temperatures from November to March, in the districts of Lisbon and Oporto. It was intended that the developed models could be a basis for the implementation of a surveillance system, equivalent to the ÍCARO project for summer, including monitoring of observed and predicted temperatures, the predicted daily risk and the potential impact of extreme low temperatures on population mortality.
This system, once implemented, will provide to the health decision-makers, namely in public health, timely information to support preparation and adaptation of levels and types of intervention in situations associated with low temperatures.
The II and final Workshop FRIESA project, held at INSA, 12th October presented and debated the evaluation of results. In this II Workshop results of the developed FRIESA models were presented and applied retrospectively to the last winter (2014/2015). The behaviour of the model selected for the best performance was positively appreciated by the participants, revealing its skill for public health and protection of the population.
During the meeting, participants discussed the preliminary proposal of the bulletin developed within the scope of the project, which includes monitoring and prediction, and the respective information circuit, in order to account to the needs of professionals in the areas of environment and health. This workshop was attended by various entities, including the Direção-Geral da Saúde, the Administrações Regionais de Saúde, the Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, IPMA and INSA. The I Workshop took place at IPMA, 3rd July 2015 with the additional presences of Autoridade Nacional para a Proteção Civil, Câmara Municipal do Porto, Agência Portuguesa do Ambiente and Instituto de Saúde Ambiental.