Health Geography Study Group: Health impact of recent bushfire smoke with Nicolás Borchers Arriagada

The Health Geography Study Group is hosting a presentation by Nicolás Borchers Arriagada from the University of Tasmania who will discuss his research into the health impacts of recent bushfire smoke.

Nicolás Borchers Arriagada is a PhD Candidate in Medical Sciences at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research from the University of Tasmania.

His research interests involve the application of engineering-type tools, economics, and modelling to policy-related environmental and energy problems. During his PhD, he will introduce health impact and economic assessments into the evaluation of wildfire risk reduction strategies. Nicolás comes from Chile where he completed his undergraduate studies as an Industrial Engineer with a Diploma in Environmental Engineering at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. After working several years as an environmental and sustainability consultant, he completed a Master of Environment at the University of Melbourne in Australia. On his return to Chile in 2014 he worked as an environmental data analyst at the Environmental Enforcement Agency, where he gained better knowledge about environmental regulations and the use of analytics tools for data manipulation and the assessment of environmental compliance. With more than ten years of working experience in areas such as air quality and human health impacts, public policy, public health, environmental regulations and analytics, decision-support systems, Nicolás looks forward to merging this knowledge into applicable tools and frameworks that will contribute to improve human wellbeing.

Nicolás will present the health impact of recent bushfire smoke based on the paper below, along with some additional economic estimates.

"Unprecedented smoke-related health burden associated with the 2019–20 bushfires in eastern Australia" 

Nicolás Borchers Arriagada, Andrew J Palmer, David MJS Bowman, Geoffrey G Morgan, Bin B Jalaludin and Fay H Johnston. Med J Aust || doi: 10.5694/mja2.50545

https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2020/213/6/unprecedented-smoke-related-health-burden-associated-2019-20-bushfires-eastern