InvaHealth: Global human health costs from biological invasions

This is the shared Github code and data repository for members of InvaHealth. Curated by @cjabradshaw, @glatombe, and @chrisdiagne.

If you are affiliated with InvaHealth and have a Github account (click here to subscribe to Github if not), but are not yet a member of this Github organisation, please request membership here.

The objective of InvaHealth is to categorise and quantify the specific impacts of biological invasions on human health

🦟 ⚕️ 🐜 🌿 🐀 🐍 🐇 🐛 🐈‍⬛

Biological invasions are a major component of global change. They have important ecological, socio-economic, and health consequences, including the spread of diseases, severe allergies, and impacts on mental and physical well-being. The monetary quantification of these impacts is an effective way to alert policymakers and stakeholders, and contributing to the co-design of sustainable solutions. While the recent, open-access InvaCost database provides a comprehensive overview of monetary costs associated with invasive species, health-related costs remain underrepresented.

The InvaHealth database will be based on a framework including an eco-epidemiological component detailing various mechanisms affecting health and an economic component assessing cost distribution among stakeholders. This resource will facilitate future research, inform science-based policies, and contribute to better human health outcomes by preventing and addressing invasion-driven impacts, while promoting biodiversity conservation and ecological integrity.

Core members

Principal Investigators

Guillaume Latombe (aka 'César'), University of Edinburgh


Christophe Diagne (aka 'Gustavo el Cubano'), Institut de recherche pour le développement

Participants

Elena Angulo (aka 'La Jefa'), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas


Corey Bradshaw (aka 'Colin Dubois'), Flinders University


Franck Courchamp, Université Paris-Saclay


Pierre Courtois, Centre for Environmental Economics


Ross Cuthbert (aka 'Larry Bradley'), Queen's University Belfast


Melina Kourantidou (aka 'Millionaire'), University of Southern Denmark


Paulina Pontifes, (aka 'Xola', not 'Chola'), Institut de recherche pour le développement


David Renault (aka Dédé), Université de Rennes


David Roiz (aka 'Dodo'), Institut de recherche pour le développement


Louis Simon (aka 'Camembière'), Queen's University Belfast


Anna Turbelin, Natural Resources Canada

Example content:

Data

• WWF Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World: shapefiles for assessing the ecoregion associated with each database entry

Scripts

• WWFecoregionOverlay.R: find the biome in the WWF Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World shapefile for specific lat/lon coordinates
• countryCentroids.R: find the latitude/longitude of the centroid of any country
• countrycodes.R: translate full country names in various languages to the ISO3 country code
• currencyConvert.R: translates any currency value into a specified USD-equivalent (set year); also includes code to correct for purchase power parity

Metadata

• InvaHealthDDdescriptors: column descriptions for the InvaHealth database

Related databases

• InvaCost
• AedesCost
• ZOVER
• GIATAR
• GLOBI

Learning resources

• assignDOI: Assign a digital object identifier (DOI) to your Github repository
• FAIR_Workshop_github: A repository for practicing the basic use of Github
• learningRresources: Various online & other resources for learning and improving skills in the R programming language
• learningPythonResources: Various online & other resources for learning and improving skills in the Python programming language

Software/utilities

• QGIS: A free, open-source, cross-platform (lin/win/mac) geographical information system (GIS)
• FRBCesab: The Fondation pour la recherche sur la biodiversité (FRB) Centre de synthèse et d'analyse sur la biodiversité (CESAB) Github organisation page