Floods cut off roads and homes in Kampala, Uganda
Center for Rapid Evidence Synthesis (ACRES) is implementing the DESTINY project, an international research initiative that will harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to combat the climate-related health challenges.
DESTINY – Digital Evidence Synthesis Tool Innovation Yielding Improvements in Climate & Health, is a four-year research consortium that brings together leading experts from Europe, Africa, and Australia. The project is funded by the Wellcome Trust with a grant of 12 million euros.
The primary objective of DESTINY is to develop innovative AI-driven tools that can rapidly synthesize and summarize the vast research literature on climate change and its impact on human health. By leveraging the latest advances in AI, the project aims to provide policymakers with the most up-to-date and accurate scientific evidence to inform their decisions.
“Stopping climate change is critical for securing human health,” emphasizes Jan Minx, head of the MCC working group Applied Sustainability Science and principal investigator of the DESTINY project.
“Policymakers need the best and most recent scientific evidence to support their decisions, but the ready-to-hand evidence is often anecdotal and outdated. This project is pushing the boundaries of what is possible by using the latest advances in AI,” he added.
DESTINY aims to co-develop a new generation of digital evidence synthesis tools (DESTs) and showcase their transformational power for the delivery of rigorous living evidence in climate and health that matters to policymakers and other evidence users. This defines who we work with, how we work, and the technology we use to make evidence synthesis dramatically more useful. In particular, DESTINY project will:
- Leverage recent AI advances to develop new DESTs, enhancing evidence synthesis by reconfiguring human-machine interactions (WP2);
- Engage in DEST evaluation to design safe and responsible applications without eroding methodological standards (WP3);
- Build communities of practice with decision makers around the globe and across scales to ensure DESTs are fit-for-purpose, work for all and are applied to six impact cases that matter (WP1, WP4); and
- Mainstream use of DESTs and support users, producers, and funders of climate and health evidence synthesis to establish best practices (WP5).
Overview of the DESTINY project
The project commenced in January 2025. The consortium partners include:
- The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine,
- The Center for Rapid Evidence Synthesis (ACRES),
- Future Evidence Foundation,
- The African Synthesis Centre for Climate Change, Environment and Development,
- Effective Basic Services (eBase) Africa,
- The Campbell Collaboration and
- Cochrane
Visit the project website here
Full Press Release Stopping climate change protects human health
