A GIS-based urban simulation model for environmental health analysis

•Development of a simulation model for environmental health analysis: SIENA.•SIENA is an analysis tool which uses probabilistic and spatial models within a GIS.•Real-world urban structures and relationships guided the simulation process.•Validation confirmed that SIENA is a representation of a functioning city.•SIENA can be used to explore theoretical and methodological issues in study design.

This paper introduces an urban simulation model for environmental health analysis (SIENA). SIENA is a novel tool to explore urban interactions and processes with regard to exposure assessments. It is based on urban structures and relationships observed in real-world cities making it a realistic representation of a functioning city. The development of SIENA involved identifying and quantifying fundamental processes and similarities in urban areas in Great Britain and using those to guide the building of SIENA within a GIS. An internal validation confirmed SIENA's realism. Its generality, achieved through the pooling of information from different real-world cities, makes it particularly useful for developing and testing spatial epidemiological concepts and models; simulating processes and interactions relating to environmental exposure; and exploring theoretical and methodological problems in the spatial analysis of environmental health. SIENA ultimately provides a much needed tool in the form of a controlled, simplified urban simulation model.