Tóm tắt

This paper introduces an urban simulation model for environmental health analysis (SIENA). SIENA is arnnovel tool to explore urban interactions and processes with regard to exposure assessments. It is basedrnon urban structures and relationships observed in real-world cities making it a realistic representation ofrna functioning city. The development of SIENA involved identifying and quantifying fundamental processes and similarities in urban areas in Great Britain and using those to guide the building of SIENArnwithin a GIS. An internal validation confirmed SIENA’s realism. Its generality, achieved through thernpooling of information from different real-world cities, makes it particularly useful for developing andrntesting spatial epidemiological concepts and models; simulating processes and interactions relating tornenvironmental exposure; and exploring theoretical and methodological problems in the spatial analysisrnof environmental health. SIENA ultimately provides a much needed tool in the form of a controlled,rnsimplified urban simulation model.