DESTinY

Background

Climate change is already causing widespread human suffering and escalating health risks, creating urgent demand for timely, decision-relevant evidence to guide mitigation and adaptation. Living evidence offers a powerful way to close evidence gaps as new research emerges, but conventional synthesis approaches cannot keep pace with the scale and speed of the climate–health literature. DESTinY responds by co-developing a new generation of AI-enabled Digital Evidence Synthesis Tools (DESTs) that make rigorous living evidence faster, cheaper, and more useful, while maintaining trust, safety, and methodological standards.

Research question, aims and objectives

How can AI-enabled evidence synthesis tools be designed and applied safely and responsibly to deliver rigorous living evidence that better supports climate and health decision-making across contexts?

DESTinY will

• Develop next-generation AI-enhanced DESTs that reconfigure human–machine interactions across the evidence pipeline (e.g., discovery, extraction, appraisal, synthesis).
• Evaluate DESTs rigorously to ensure safe, responsible use without eroding methodological standards and trust.
• Build communities of practice with decision-makers to ensure tools and living evidence outputs are fit-for-purpose and work across low- and high-resource settings.
• Support adoption and best practices among users, producers, and funders of climate and health evidence synthesis.

Project highlights

• A living, open repository of climate & health research and modular tools (APIs/apps) to accelerate evidence synthesis and decision support.
• Six real-world impact cases demonstrating DEST-enabled living maps, living systematic reviews, and evidence transfer for climate–health decisions across scales.
• Methods and guidance for responsible AI in evidence synthesis, including validation approaches and best-practice recommendations.
• Capacity building through workshops, training, and engagement to mainstream DEST best practice globally, including in lower-resource contexts.

ASCEND’s role

ASCEND helps ensure DESTinY delivers decision-relevant, globally useful living evidence by:

1. Convening and sustaining relationships with decision-makers and supporting co-production so tools and syntheses address real policy/practice needs.
2. Contributing to impact cases that apply and test digital evidence synthesis tools in practical settings, including evidence transfer to evidence-poor contexts.
3. Supporting engagement and capacity building, leveraging ASCEND’s networks and support for African synthesis teams to accelerate responsible tool uptake and living evidence practice.

Project team

DESTinY is delivered by a global consortium spanning evidence synthesis, tool development, and engagement. ASCEND participates alongside partners including leading climate and health teams and evidence tool developers.