{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,2]],"date-time":"2025-08-02T16:15:25Z","timestamp":1754151325417,"version":"3.41.2"},"reference-count":34,"publisher":"Public Library of Science (PLoS)","issue":"7","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,18]],"date-time":"2025-07-18T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1752796800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004794","name":"Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004794","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.plosdigitalhealth.org"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["PLOS Digit Health"],"abstract":"<jats:p>COVID-19 is caused by a severe acute respiratory syndrome due to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. It has reshaped the world with the way our communities interact, people work, commute, and spend their leisure time. While different mitigation solutions for controlling COVID-19 virus transmission have already been established, global models that would explain and predict the impact of urban environments on the case fatality ratio CFR of COVID-19 (defined as the number of deaths divided by the number of cases over a time window) are missing. Here, with readily available data from public sources, we study the CFR of the coronavirus for 118 locations (city zip-codes, city boroughs, and cities) worldwide to identify the links between the CFR and outdoor, indoor and personal urban factors. We show that a probabilistic model, optimized on the sample of 20 districts from 4 major US cities, provides an accurate predictive tool for the CFR of COVID-19 regardless of the geographical location. Furthermore, we show that the validity of the model extends to other infectious diseases such as flu and pneumonia with pre-COVID-19 pandemic data for 3 US cities indicating that the first COVID-19 wave severity corresponds to that of pneumonia while other COVID-19 waves have the severity of influenza.When adjusted for the population, our model can be used to evaluate risk and severity of the disease within different parts of the city for different waves of the pandemic. Our results suggest that although disease screening and vaccination policies to containment and lockdowns remain critical in controlling the spread of airborne diseases, urban factors such as population density, humidity, or order of buildings, should all be taken into consideration when identifying resources and planning targeted responses to mitigate the impact and severity of the viruses transmitted through air.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pdig.0000921","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,18]],"date-time":"2025-07-18T17:43:48Z","timestamp":1752860628000},"page":"e0000921","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pdig.corrections_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Urban environmental and population factors as determinants of COVID-19 severity: A spatially-resolved probabilistic modeling approach"],"prefix":"10.1371","volume":"4","author":[{"given":"Jacob","family":"Roxon","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Marie-Sophie","family":"Dumont","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Eric","family":"Vilain","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Mircea T.","family":"Sofonea","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5559-4190","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Roland J-M.","family":"Pellenq","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"340","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,18]]},"reference":[{"key":"pdig.0000921.ref001","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"105772","DOI":"10.1016\/j.landusepol.2021.105772","article-title":"How COVID-19 reshaped quality of life in cities: a synthesis and implications for urban planning","volume":"111","author":"K Mouratidis","year":"2021","journal-title":"Land use policy"},{"key":"pdig.0000921.ref002","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"142391","DOI":"10.1016\/j.scitotenv.2020.142391","article-title":"The COVID-19 pandemic: Impacts on cities and major lessons for urban planning, design, and management","volume":"749","author":"A Sharifi","year":"2020","journal-title":"Sci Total Environ"},{"issue":"1","key":"pdig.0000921.ref003","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"8191","DOI":"10.1038\/s41598-021-86873-0","article-title":"A compartmental model that predicts the effect of social distancing and vaccination on controlling COVID-19","volume":"11","author":"M Dashtbali","year":"2021","journal-title":"Sci Rep"},{"key":"pdig.0000921.ref004","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"113478","DOI":"10.1016\/j.socscimed.2020.113478","article-title":"Motivating social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic: an online experiment","volume":"265","author":"PD Lunn","year":"2020","journal-title":"Soc Sci Med"},{"key":"pdig.0000921.ref005","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"382","DOI":"10.1038\/d41586-021-00396-2","article-title":"The coronavirus is here to stay \u2013 here\u2019s what that means","volume":"590","author":"N Phillips","year":"2021","journal-title":"Nature"},{"issue":"2","key":"pdig.0000921.ref006","first-page":"189","article-title":"A framework for crisis management in developing countries","volume":"5","author":"F Daneshgar","year":"2011","journal-title":"Intell Dec Technol: Int J"},{"issue":"1","key":"pdig.0000921.ref007","first-page":"75","article-title":"Fuzzy awareness model for disaster situations","volume":"3","author":"P Ray","year":"2009","journal-title":"Intell Dec Technol: Int J"},{"issue":"7","key":"pdig.0000921.ref008","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pcbi.1009090","article-title":"Spatially resolved simulations of the spread of COVID-19 in three European countries","volume":"17","author":"A Parisi","year":"2021","journal-title":"PLoS Comput Biol"},{"key":"pdig.0000921.ref009","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.7554\/eLife.71417","article-title":"Emerging dynamics from high-resolution spatial numerical epidemics","volume":"10","author":"O Thomine","year":"2021","journal-title":"Elife"},{"key":"pdig.0000921.ref010","first-page":"133","article-title":"Applied and theoretical aspects of virus adsorption to surfaces.","volume-title":"Advances in Applied Microbiology","author":"CP. 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