Informal settlement, economic and environmental change and public health - Strategies to improve the quality of life in Dhaka II

<p>DHAKA-INNOVATE is centred around the informal settlements of Dhaka and focuses on three interwoven topics of vital relevance for the future development of the megacity of Dhaka, Bangladesh: Firstly, socioeconomic development, limitations, and improvement strategies; secondly, climatologic and air pollution effects from the local to global scale; thirdly, public health issues related to socioeconomics, climate and air pollution and living conditions. The research is undertaken in a spatially explicit way, linked in with remote sensing derived meta-indicators, and integrated via GIS-based modelling approaches.</p>

<p>The research takes into account the globalised framework of relevant processes, both socioeconomically and environmentally. Local effects are hence embedded in a multiscale framework, providing a focus so as to derive relevant indicators in the context of global, regional and local driving forces. Results will on the one hand facilitate integrated modelling allowing for future perspectives in the light of relevant processes in the Dhaka context. On the other hand, indicator based and spatially explicit explanation pathways open up the opportunity to transfer results to other megacities.</p>

<p>Results after something over one year of intensive research indicate that commonly accepted theories on fragmentation and segmentation in a megacity like Dhaka do not necessarily hold true. Spill-over effects from formal to informal structures and vice versa affect processes concerning urban economy, ecology and related public health conditions alike. We hence hypothesize that processes affecting formal-informal relationships have to be re-considered and research will focus on these inter-linkages in the forthcoming project period. Ideally, parallel research in the PRD projects should either confirm our hypothesis in China or reveal relevant differences.</p>