Measuring temperature-related mortality using endogenously determined thresholds

Abstract

Heat-related mortality tends to be associated with heatwaves that do not allow for sufficient acclimatisation to hot weather. In contrast, damage functions and most heatwave emergency response plans do not account for acclimatisation. Using an excess heat measure that accounts for acclimatisation, this paper produces estimates of temperature-related mortality for the five largest Australian capital cities. Fixed effects panel threshold regressions are applied to establish the thresholds that coincide with heightened mortality during extreme temperature events. The estimated parameters associated with these thresholds are then used to develop hindcast estimates for cold temperatures, moderate temperatures, hot temperatures and extreme heat. The estimated thresholds coincide with a notable impact of hot weather on mortality, but a limited cold weather impact. This shows that the burden of risk associated with mortality related to future temperatures and climate change within Australia coincides with heatwaves rather than coldwaves. This is in contrast to recent studies that found that cold weather-related mortality within Australian capital cities has and will continue to be notable. These studies also found a net benefit from climate change in Australia due to reduced cold weather deaths.

The use of an ‘acclimatisation’ heatwave measure to compare temperature-related demand for emergency services in Australia, Botswana, Netherlands, Pakistan, and USA

“…Two separate thresholds were used to define “hot days”: (1) days with an EHI_A ≥ 4, and (2) days with an EHI_A ≥ 7, based on use in a prior study [7]. It was decided to use these same thresholds after eyeballing Fig 1 (see Results section), which did not identify alternative EHI_A thresholds associated with clear increases in the mean number of ED attendances in the selected regions.…”

“…This regression approach has been used to investigate whether there are thresholds that are relevant to the number of daily ED services. Thresholds have been found for temperature-related mortality using a similar approach in [7] and this analysis focuses on whether the same is true for ED services. These regressions were performed in Stata using the ‘threshold’ command with the data specified as time-series data for each hospital.…”

“…While prior publications addressed the impact of temperature on mortality [7, 8], few studies related temperature to morbidity as well as mortality [9]. Åström et al reviewed studies about the impact of heatwaves and elevated temperature on the elderly.…”

Machine Learning Approaches to Identify Thresholds in a Heat-Health Warning System Context

“…Although the association between X and Y is usually modelled nonlinearly, it has been shown that it can be well approximated by a piecewise linear function (Cheng et al, 2019;Longden, 2018;Masselot et al, 2018). Thus, we consider the following model:…”

Mortalidad y vulnerabilidad ambiental en los municipios de la cuenca y la ribera del Usumacinta del trienio 2014-2016.

“…En términos epidemiológicos, la asociación entre la temperatura y la mortalidad humana ha sido intensamente estudiada (Yang y Jensen, 2017; Gosling et al, 2017;Bell et al, 2008;Lomgden, 2018;Marsha et al, 2018), entre los argumentos se menciona que el calor puede provocar un incremento en la mortalidad, sobre todo en zonas urbanas, debido a la mayor concentración de construcciones y al hacinamiento. Se ha asociado también en zonas donde el calor se relaciona con un incremento de los casos de malaria (Jonathan et al, 2018).…”