C2C CLOUD TO COAST: Integrated assessment of environmental exposure, health impacts and risk perceptions of faecal organisms in coastal waters

粪便指示生物（FIO）所指示的病原体对健康的影响来自于与集水区、河流、河口和沿海沃茨的水接触和食物消费。然而，与这些接触相关的风险往往是高度偶发性的，并由病原体脱落率、潮汐、天气和季节决定，所有这些都受到气候变化的影响，特别是在包括风暴的情况下。点源包括污水流出物、合流下水道溢流的间歇性排放物、农业点源（如粪肥库）和扩散源。粪便负荷在土壤-淡水（包括地下水和/或河水）-河口-海岸路径中衰减。更好地预测这些污染物沿着其从源头到受体的路径的归宿和迁移，将为若干健康、政策和业务问题提供信息，包括：-是否通过限制进入接收沃茨或通过管理潜在的污染物来源来管理健康风险; -何时宣布沿海沃茨关闭，何时重新开放，权衡健康风险与经济和社会影响;- 还需要部署哪些污水/间歇性排放处理，这涉及到在财政和碳成本与不经常的健康改善之间进行权衡; -需要实施哪些农业管理方案，在财政和粮食安全影响与潜在的健康改善之间进行权衡？- 如何更好地优化健康和风险管理过程的基础上，科学证据与公众的看法。拟议的研究旨在开发一种新的综合模型，以预测在近岸沿海沃茨中的病原体风险暴露和健康影响评估，如FIO所示。该方法将建立和验证一个FIO归宿和迁移模型，该模型将降雨和集水资源纳入沿海接收沃茨，并将该模型与增强的疾病负担模型和定量微生物风险评估程序一起使用，以进行动态定量健康影响评估。然后，将利用总体模型分析各种未来情景的政策选择，包括气候变化（就降雨量变化而言），并将结果与实际和预期的健康风险联系起来。研究结果将为确定的政策差距提供信息，并改进决策，以最大限度地减少FIO的健康风险。

Health impacts from pathogens indexed by faecal indicator organisms (FIOs) arise from water contact and food consumption derived from catchments, rivers, estuaries and coastal waters. However, the risks associated with these exposures are often highly episodic and determined by rates of pathogen shedding, tides, weather and seasons, all of which are impacted by changing climate, and particularly when storminess is included. Point sources include sewage effluents, intermittent discharges from combined sewer overflows, agricultural point sources such as manure stores, and diffuse sources. Faecal loads are attenuated during the soil - fresh water (including groundwater and/or river water) - estuarine - coastal pathway. Better predictions of the fate and transport of these pollutants along their pathways from sources to receptors would inform several health, policy and operational issues, including: - Whether to manage health risks by restricting access to receiving waters or by management of potential sources of pollutants; - When to declare coastal waters closed, and when to reopen them, trading off the health risks against the economic and social impacts; - What further sewage/intermittent discharge treatment to deploy, which involves trading off the financial and carbon costs against the infrequent health improvements; - What agricultural management options to impose, trading off the financial and food security impacts against the potential health improvements? - How better to optimise health and risk-management processes based on scientific evidence vis-a-vis public perception. The proposed research seeks to develop a new integrated model to predict the exposure to and the health impact assessment of pathogen risks, as indexed by FIOs, in near-shore coastal waters. The approach will be to build and validate a FIO fate and transport model which incorporates rainfall and catchment sources to coastal receiving waters, to use this model together with enhanced disease burden modelling and quantitative microbial risk assessment procedures to produce a dynamic quantitative health impact assessment. The overall model will then be used to analyse policy options for range of future scenarios, including climate change (in terms of changes in rainfall), and to relate the outcomes to actual and perceived health risks. The outputs of the research will inform identified policy gaps and afford improved decision making to minimise health risk from FIO.