Environmental Data Unit (EDU)

The NAKO Environmental Data Unit (EDU) collects and harmonises spatial environmental data available throughout Germany (e.g. air quality, meteorology, noise, land cover, deprivation) and assigns it to all NAKO participants based on their place of residence for an individual exposure assessment. Here you will find information on how to apply for the data, about the data transfer as well as a selection of available environmental data.

Questions? Please feel free to contact nako-edu@helmholtz-munich.de

Available environmental data

The environmental data is continuously being expanded. The current list of variables can be requested via email to nako-edu@helmholtz-munich.de. In the near future, the environmental variables will appear as a separate tree in the NAKO TransferHub.

In addition, further spatiotemporal data can be linked via the EDU if the necessary maps can be made available to the EDU. If this is not possible, the district of the place of residence is available via the NAKO TransferHub. For higher-resolution data (e.g. municipalities, postcodes), a two-stage application is possible after consultation with the EDU.

Currently, the environmental data is limited to the residential information of the baseline examination. An extension to the retro- and prospective residential history is envisaged.

Selection of maps

Daily near-surface air temperature in Germany, 2000–2021

Daily near-surface air temperature in Germany for the period 2000–2021. The mean, minimum and maximum air temperature was generated using a three-stage regression model. Meteorological measurements, remote sensing data and multiple land cover predictors were included. The data is available on a 1 × 1 km INSPIRE grid.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2022.115062

Daily estimates of relative humidity for the period 2000-2021. Remote sensing data, meteorological measurements and modelled data were combined using a random forest modelling approach to determine the relative humidity for entire Germany. The data has a spatial resolution of 1 × 1 km.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2023.117173

Air pollution data from the ELAPSE (Effects of Low-Level Air Pollution: A Study in Europe, http://www.elapseproject.eu/) project. The mean annual concentrations of particulate matter with a diameter < 2.5 μm (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3) and black carbon (PM2.5 abs) were centrally modelled for the year 2010 using land use regression models for Western Europe. The data has a spatial resolution of 100 m × 100 m.

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2018.07.036

Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) across Germany over the period 2014-2021. The NDVI values are based on monthly data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Terra Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), averaged between March and October. The data was masked with the MOD44W mask layer to exclude water pixels and has a spatial resolution of 1 × 1 km. 

https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MOD13A3.006

Data application

As long as the variable selection is not possible via the NAKO TransferHub or for variables that are not (yet) in the TransferHub, the required variables are selected via an Excel (xlsx) list, which you can adapt accordingly and upload as an attachment to your data application. It is advisable to consult the EDU (nako-edu@helmholtz-munich.de) in advance.

Data transfer

The data transfer of environmental data is currently carried out directly via email and download link provided by the EDU. An upload of the environmental data into the TransferHub is envisaged, but not yet implemented. For linkage to the health data, the environmental dataset contains the pseudonymised ID in addition to the environmental variables, which can be used to combine the two datasets.