pollen allergy: toward a system of risk forecasting – PREVIPOL

Allergy to pollen is an increasing human health problem with more than 20% of children sensitized. This problem is expected to be emphasized by climate change. One important tool for adaptation and prevention of risk is to be able to forecast the risk based on forecasting peak of airborne pollen concentration. This is helpful for sensitized population to limit their exposition and for medical and pharmacological system to anticipate needs. However only few attempts have been done to include pollen within air quality forecasting system. The project aims at addressing this question by developing a forecasting system of allergy risk to pollen in response to weather conditions at the French level to implement in French and European air quality forecasting systems. The project is based on a complementary and combined approach with data and model. A first objective of the project will be to improve the existing french aerobiological network by developing a new generation of automatic real time pollen sensors. The current measurement are indeed done by manual count of pollen grains. This limit the number of station that can be managed and induce delay between measurement and estimation of pollen load. These new automatic sensors will open a new era for aerobiological survey by allowing both real time informations and a better spatial coverage. A second objective of the project will be to develop a complete modeling chain to describe all the processes from production of pollen by plants to transport by the atmosphere. This model will include all the processes related to pollen emission including plant phenology and pollen production related to climate conditions. A method will also be developed to assimilate in-situ data by dynamic optimisation of parameters of the surface pollen emission model to obtain to most reliable pollen forecast. Finally a link will be done between pollen concentration and clinical symptoms by relating pollen to prescription of drugs and clinical index filled by a doctor’s network. This studies will allow to defined empirical relationships that will be included into the modeling system to assess a factor of risk. This system will be implemented into the French air quality system PREV’AIR and the proof of concept will be evaluated. The multidisciplinary consortium will be based on public research institute , operators for air quality monitoring and two private companies and the global leader in immunotherapy who will help to define user requirements