About

Climate Change & Health Surveillance Platform

The Climate Change & Health Surveillance Platform is an integrated decision-support tool developed to monitor, analyse, and visualise the intersection of climate variability and population health outcomes across South Africa's nine provinces.

Our Mission

To provide timely, evidence-based intelligence on how climate change and extreme weather events affect the health of South African communities -- particularly vulnerable populations including children under 5 and school-aged children -- enabling proactive public health responses and informed policy decisions.

Platform Overview

The platform integrates multiple data streams to create a comprehensive picture of climate-health dynamics:

• Health surveillance data from the National Department of Health (NDOH), covering school health screening, nutritional status, diarrhoeal disease, emergency services performance, and maternal health
• Extreme weather event data from the South African Weather Service (SAWS), including long-term reporting on storms, floods, droughts, heat, and other high-impact weather events
• Historical climate indicators extracted from University of East Anglia, Norwich by Gemma Hickinbotham, including Mean Temperature, Total Rainfall, and Extreme Heat Days
• Historical extreme weather events (1991-2024), compiled from SAWS records covering over 2,600 events including storms, floods, fires, droughts, and heatwaves
• Facility quality data from the Ideal Clinic Realisation and Maintenance (ICRM) programme
• Community outreach data from Ward-Based Primary Healthcare Outreach Teams (WBPHCOT)

Key Features

• Interactive geospatial mapping with provincial-level health and weather data overlays
• Historical extreme weather event visualisation with filtering by year, province, and event type
• Trend analysis for climate-health indicators across multiple years
• Real-time weather conditions for major South African cities via Open-Meteo API
• Automated weather alert generation based on temperature, rainfall, and wind thresholds
• Ideal Clinic facility quality assessment and provincial ranking
• Publicly viewable surveillance pages with protected account and admin areas
• Integrated definitions and metadata for indicator units and interpretation

Acknowledgements

This platform has been developed with data and support from:

• National Department of Health (NDOH) -- for provision of health surveillance data through the District Health Information System (DHIS), Integrated School Health Programme, and Ideal Clinic monitoring programme
• South African Weather Service (SAWS) -- for extreme weather event data and historical event documentation
• University of East Anglia, Norwich by Gemma Hickinbotham -- for historical climate indicator data used to derive Mean Temperature, Total Rainfall, and Extreme Heat Days
• Open-Meteo -- for real-time weather data API access

For platform-specific enquiries, data access requests, or technical support, please visit the Support page or consult the FAQ.