Placement background / expected impact:
Local temperature extremes can impact the health of vulnerable populations such as prisoners and older people. However, high-resolution environmental data is often limited, reducing our ability to fully understand how temperature extremes may result in poor health outcomes for vulnerable populations locally.
In a preliminary study undertaken by the UKHSA Geospatial team in collaboration with the Health Equity team, we incorporated the application of earth observation (EO) data to draw insights into the prison environment. Using remotely sensed land surface temperatures (LST) focused on prison compounds across London, the exploratory analysis demonstrates that prison compounds not only experience a wider range of LST than that seen across the rest of London, but also that prison compounds reach quite high LSTs in summer and low LSTs in winter. Living in consistently cold or hot conditions can have severe health impacts on vulnerable populations. Although we recognise that LST does not tell us directly about indoor air temperatures inside prison buildings, it can give us an indication of building and compound heat externally, allowing us to compare this between localities.
Outline of duties:
You will be required to engage with teams across the UKHSA, including the Geospatial, All Hazards Intelligence, Health Equity and Extreme Events teams. You will also be required to engage with established contacts in external government departments, including the Ministry of Justice and HM Prisons and Probation Service.
To ensure this project aligns with other work in this area we would like you to consider how data linkage and spatial analysis could plug some of the data gaps and interoperability issues as outlined in the CMO Prison Health report.
During this placement we would expect you to:
● Disseminate findings to the National and Regional Leads in Health and Justice team in UKHSA via the opportunity to develop and host a workshop on extreme weather in prison settings.
● Present project developments and findings through seminars and webinars e.g. UKHSA’s developing Government Geography Profession, Chief Data Officer Townhalls, the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) and at academic conferences.
This project will provide a comprehensive population health experience, including learning about surveillance systems for health, data analyses and statistics, understanding various infectious disease control programmes and use of evidence to inform and support the development of national policy.
Expected output(s)/ deliverable(s):
● Expand the analysis to a larger scale beyond London to investigate how the built and natural environment influence temperatures in prison compounds to further understand how temperature varies across prison estates.
● Link extreme heat and cold events to health data to contribute foundational data and knowledge on vulnerable populations, whom we currently know very little about.
● Work with subject matter experts across government agencies to produce recommendations for prison settings, which may allow adaptations to climate change for vulnerable populations.
Skills and experience required for the role:
Essential skills
- Data analysis
- Spatial data and/or modelling or statistics background
- Good communication skills
- Good with MS Office software (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
Desirable - Experience of GIS (Geographic Info Systems)
- Coding experience – R or Python.
Working pattern and location of the placement:
Placements will be remote with the occasional office/event attendance, but this is at the successful candidate’s discretion. Our head office is in Canary Wharf, we also have offices in Liverpool, Bristol and Birmingham, if you would like to attend one of the offices more regularly, we can look at getting you a government pass.
Full-time is preferred so you can fully immerse yourself in the team and project, but we will work flexibly if part-time hours are required. We do however need the placement to be undertaken in one continuous block due to IT and data access/security requirements.
Full placement details and how to apply: https://liss-dtp.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/LISS-UKHSA_Remote-sensing-for-health-monitoring-in-incarcerated-populations-during-extreme-weather-events_Placement-Opportunity.docx1_.pdf