Scientific Presentations
LabTalks@DCD
Department of Digital and Computational Demography
Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), Rostock, Germany, December 10, 2025
11:00 AM: Talk with Dariya Ordanovich - Climate Change and Population Dynamics in Spain: Long-Term Evidence and Emerging Infrastructures for Life Course Research on Environmental Exposures
Room 400
Abstract
Climate change, together with long-term demographic change, is reshaping patterns of exposure and vulnerability relevant to population health in Spain. Analyses using multi-decadal national mortality series and a century-long reconstruction for Madrid reveal consistent shifts in climate-related mortality, including a marked long-run decline in cold-related risks, a more modest and temporally delayed reduction in heat-related risks, and a progressive concentration of temperature-attributable mortality at older ages. Additional work incorporating heatwave indicators and population ageing dynamics further shows how environmental, demographic and epidemiological change interact across time. These results expose key limitations of existing statistical systems, particularly the absence of population-weighted exposure measures and the lack of longitudinal population registers that would allow the study of climate-related risks from a life-course perspective. Current efforts therefore focus on developing improved exposure metrics and on recovering and linking historical census materials to modern registers in collaboration with statistical institutes. This presentation integrates empirical findings with these methodological and infrastructural developments to outline a coherent long-term framework for understanding climate-related health risks in Spain.
About
Dariya Ordanovich is a geospatial scientist and data analyst specialising in climate-health interactions and environmental epidemiology. Her work integrates GIS, geospatial modelling, AI-enabled analytics and advanced visualisation to quantify how extreme heat, air pollution and other environmental stressors affect population health and resilience. She completed her PhD within the Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN LONGPOP, which focused on advanced methodologies for analysing large-scale longitudinal population and epidemiological registers. She subsequently worked as both a pre- and postdoctoral researcher on the ERC Advanced Grant ECHO, contributing to life-course and multistate modelling of health, mortality and intergenerational processes. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), where she contributes to interdisciplinary projects linking environmental exposures with demographic and epidemiological data. Her background includes extensive experience developing reproducible analytical tools for the integration of large, heterogeneous spatial and longitudinal datasets, supported by competitive programmes including the Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Erasmus Mundus fellowships. She is now part of the CSIC Momentum programme, a four-year initiative designed to train and retain highly qualified researchers in advanced digital competencies.