SUPR
SEEC – Swedish Environmental Epidemiology Center
Dnr:

NAISS 2024/22-817

Type:

NAISS Small Compute

Principal Investigator:

Anna Székely

Affiliation:

Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet

Start Date:

2024-06-28

End Date:

2025-07-01

Primary Classification:

30302: Public Health, Global Health, Social Medicine and Epidemiology

Webpage:

Allocation

Abstract

Since the Spring of 2020, researchers from KTH and SLU have carried out capacity-building for environmental profiling of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and for future pandemic pathogens. The researchers from five different Swedish universities propose to deploy the ‘Swedish Environmental Epidemiology Center’ (SEEC), an advanced environmental pathogen and public health profiling center. The primary purpose of SEEC is to provide a national level capacity for analysis and evaluation of environmental samples for pathogens and indicators of public health interest. During the first two years, SEEC will carry out: (1) Facilitation of continued and extended wastewater-based pandemic monitoring as well as establishment of environmental pandemic preparedness and surveillance capacity, (2) Pathogen profiling including establishment and evaluation of a built-environment sampling capacity for infection transmission risk assessment, (3) Biobanking of environmental samples of pathogen surveillance and public health relevance as well as capacity for environmental epidemiology research and development. The deployment of SEEC will create a national capability that bridges the current gap between epidemiology and environmental assessment, providing services for a rapid and effective pandemic response and population level epidemiology. SEEC will also drive the standardization of proven and effective environmental based methods for a continuous assessment of infectious disease within Sweden.