Data integration and data mining framework to discover health impacts of climate change

According to “Healthy Planet, Places and People” report prepared by Research Australia (2008) top ten health impacts of climate change are “Deaths during heatwaves – especially heart attacks and strokes; Asthma; Mosquito borne infectious diseases; Gastroenteritis and food poisoning; Mental health; Water-borne disease; Obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease; Indigenous health; Declining food yields, nutrition and health and Deteriorating global health”. Thus it becomes crucial that health and medical researchers understand how climate change and the changing environment influence these impacts in order to control, mitigate and combat them. This paper gives a framework in integrating climate, pollution and health indicator variables such as disease prevalence and occurrence data to discover the impact of climate change on health. Further it identifies the gaps in current data collection procedures and gives a recommendation on how it can be improved to facilitate such an integrated approach widely. Finally the framework is demonstrated using Asthma prevalence data and temperature attributed deaths and illustrates the limitations of the current data collection methods