Richard Belcher

I am a research associate at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Environment and Health in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, working on the AIRWAVE project, assessing how green space visible from footpaths impacts health. I also recently completed a PhD in the department on factors (traffic, local area socioeconomic deprivation and nearby water) that may change the association between residential green space and self-rated or mental health. This research was funded by the Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet (SSCP) Doctoral Training Partnership in the Grantham Institute, and is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). I am also a research associate at the University of Kent working on the Horizon Europe GreenME project, https://greenme-project.eu/ which is investigating differences in how nature in everyday-life and nature-based health promotion impacts the mental health of individuals, and how this is further dependent on a persons level of marginalization. I have broad experience in quantifying natural environments near to where people live, including their extent, composition, structure and naturalness and how these factors impact the benefits they provide (such as improving mental health, cooling the air and increasing property selling price). I am a proficient user of the R programming language (~10 years). The majority of research work I conduct includes remote sensing, data preparation and spatial analysis with Google Earth Engine, ArcGIS and QGIS and R packages such as data.table, velox, sf, terra, dplyr, tidyr and raster. I have designed a variety of studies from field experiments (rooftop thermal experiment) and observational field studies (biodiversity of green and grey environments), to citywide (hedonic pricing), national level (epidemiological analyses) and global (urban ecosystem services and green cover change) studies. I generally apply frequentist modelling approaches including longitiduinal modelling but have experience in machine learning for remote sensing classification (using R). I strive for my work to have impact beyond academia through outputs aimed at architects, policy-makers, planners and coverage in newspapers and on television. I have been a reviewer for the journals Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, Biodiversity and Conservation, Journal of Urban Ecology, Ecology and Evolution, Ecological Complexity, Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Environmental and Development Economics and Journal of Environmental Planning and Management. EMPLOYMENT AND EDUCATION Imperial College London - MRC Centre for Environment and Health—PhD Researcher— Oct. 2019–Present ETH Zurich - Future Cities Laboratory, Singapore—Researcher—Aug. 2016–April 2019 EnviroSolutions & Consulting (ESC), Singapore—Environmental Consultant—Sept. 2014 – July 2016 National University of Singapore—MSc: Environmental Management—Sept. 2013 – Sept. 2014 Bangor University—BSc (hons): Forestry—Oct. 2009 – June 2012 Self Employed and Gavin Jones, United Kingdom—Landscape Maintenance and Gardener —Mar. 2005 – July 2014

• Faculty of Medicine