“Atlante Aria e Salute” (“Air and Health Atlas”) is a research project that addresses the issue of air pollution in Italy, with a particular focus on its effects on public health and the identification of strategies to mitigate its impact.

Coordinated by Regione Emilia-Romagna and the AUSL-IRCCS of Reggio Emilia, the project involves the the Department of Design at Politecnico di Milano, through the DensityDesign Lab and DCOM groups. The Department’s contribution lies in developing visual and interactive solutions to facilitate the exploration and understanding of the collected data.

One of the project’s main goals is to make complex indicators — such as the attributable fraction of mortality, an estimate of the number of people who die each year due to poor air quality — accessible to visitors by highlighting their geographical and temporal distribution.

The interface will also be designed to allow exploration of various future scenarios, enabling users to assess the impact of environmental policies on public health.

The research objectives include:

1. Designing effective visualizations to communicate complex data clearly and accessibly;
2. Developing interactive interfaces that enable visitors to independently explore the data;
3. Supporting understanding of how key epidemiological indicators are calculated;
4. Enabling simulation and comparison of future scenarios based on different pollution reduction strategies.

The project is funded by investment E.1 “health-environment-biodiversity-climate” of the National Complementary Investment Plan to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), under a collaboration agreement between the Ministry of Health and the Emilia-Romagna Region.