Opportunities and Challenges for Personal Heat Exposure Research

Kuras, Evan R.; Richardson, Molly B.; Calkins, Miriam; Ebi, Kristie L.; Hess, Jeremy; Kintziger, Kristina W.; Jagger, Meredith A.; Middel, Ariane; Scott, Anna A.; Spector, June T.; Uejio, Christopher K.; Vanos, Jennifer; Zaitchik, Benjamin F.; Gohlke, Julia M.; Hondula, David M.

doi:10.1289/ehp556

Cited by 142 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Further research is also needed to refine estimates of future heat‐related health challenges, mainly by the use of improved methodologies to project future urban population growth—informed by projections of other socioeconomic parameters such as GDP and by a better delineation of future urban boundaries that account for geographic constraints such as slope, land cover, and protected areas—and by considering the current and future UHI and its influence on AT under different socioeconomic and climatic pathways (Georgescu et al, ). Future work should also aim at better characterizing the share of the population that is truly exposed to extreme heat—moving toward personal heat exposure research, which accounts for both indoor and outdoor environment and individual behaviors (Bernhard et al, ; Kuras et al, ). Finally, further research is certainly needed to go beyond exposure and to explore future vulnerability to heat under the different SSPs—employing the growing body of literature that extend and quantify the global SSPs' narratives (e.g., Crespo Cuaresma et al, ; Kurniawan & Managi, ; Witmer et al, )—and particularly their ability to shift the burden of heat‐related health risks in African cities to lower levels, under varying degrees of exposure.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projections of Human Exposure to Dangerous Heat in African Cities Under Multiple Socioeconomic and Climate Scenarios

et al. 2019

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Human exposure to dangerous heat, driven by climatic and demographic changes, is increasing worldwide. Being located in hot regions and showing high rates of urban population growth, African cities appear particularly likely to face significantly increased exposure to dangerous heat in the coming decades. We combined projections of urban population under five socioeconomic scenarios—shared socioeconomic pathways—with projections of apparent temperature under three representative concentration pathways in order to explore future exposure to dangerous heat across 173 large African cities. Employing multiple shared socioeconomic pathway and representative concentration pathway combinations, we demonstrated that the aggregate exposure in African cities will increase by a multiple of 20–52, reaching 86–217 billion person‐days per year by the 2090s, depending on the scenario. The most exposed cities are located in Western and Central Africa, although several Eastern African cities showed an increase of more than 2,000 times the current level by the 2090s, due to the emergence of dangerous heat conditions combined with steady urban population growth. In most cases, we found future exposure to be predominantly driven by changes in population alone or by concurrent changes in climate and population, with the influence of changes in climate alone being minimal. We also demonstrated that shifting from a high to a low urban population growth pathway leads to a slightly greater reduction in aggregate exposure than shifting from a high to a low emissions pathway (51% vs. 48%). This emphasizes the critical role that socioeconomic development plays in shaping heat‐related health challenges in African cities.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projections of Human Exposure to Dangerous Heat in African Cities Under Multiple Socioeconomic and Climate Scenarios

et al. 2019

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“…Even within the city, vulnerability varies widely across all spatial scales. New techniques are being used to assess variability in vulnerability based on socio-economic and environmental factors (Reid et al 2012) to explore intra-urban variability , Uejio et al 2011, and highlight the importance of individual exposure (Kuras et al 2017). Including these aspects in temporal analyses will help clarify the causes of the trends observed.…”

Section: Moving Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal trends in human vulnerability to excessive heat

Sheridan

Allen

2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

100

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“…Generating more data that can help researchers and practitioners understand behaviors and exposure circumstances contributing to risk of heat-related illness and death should be a high priority (e.g. Kuras et al 2017). These data would be especially important to help practitioners prioritize urban heat mitigation initiatives, which have significantly varying impacts on different parts of the diurnal temperature cycle (e.g.…”

Section: Conclusion and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

It’s not the heat, it’s the vulnerability: attribution of the 2016 spike in heat-associated deaths in Maricopa County, Arizona

Putnam

Hondula

Urban

et al. 2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Health risk assessments for extreme heat and the design of corresponding interventions can be enhanced with more information regarding causal drivers of year-to-year variability in adverse outcomes. Summer 2016 was a record-setting year in terms of summer heat and its impacts on health in Maricopa County, Arizona, USA. The month of June was the warmest observed in the county and the six-month warm season spanning May through October was the fourth warmest. In the same year, a record number of heat-associated deaths was reported by the heat surveillance program run by the county health department. We analyzed the time series of heat-associated deaths to quantify the extent to which the unprecedented death count in 2016 was driven by anomalous weather. We first estimated the historical association between temperature and heat-associated deaths for the time period 2006-2015 using a time series regression model. Subsequently, we used the model to generate predictions of daily heat-associated deaths in 2016 based on the observed weather. We found no evidence that the unusually high number of heat-associated deaths observed in Maricopa County in 2016 was related to observed meteorological conditions. Regardless of the exposure variable or model parameterization chosen, the prediction for 2016 fell near or below the historical average number of heat-associated deaths. If the conventional methods for estimating the temperature-mortality association are reasonably approximating a causal relationship, factors other than the weather were mostly responsible for the surge in deaths in 2016. These findings highlight the importance of nonmeteorological factors as drivers of temporal variability in the health burden associated with heat, which have generally not been included in quantitative retrospective or prospective studies. Further, they highlight a shortcoming in preparedness and response efforts for heat in the study setting that should be diagnosed and addressed as soon as possible.

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Opportunities and Challenges for Personal Heat Exposure Research

Cited by 142 publications

References 59 publications

Projections of Human Exposure to Dangerous Heat in African Cities Under Multiple Socioeconomic and Climate Scenarios

Projections of Human Exposure to Dangerous Heat in African Cities Under Multiple Socioeconomic and Climate Scenarios

Temporal trends in human vulnerability to excessive heat

It’s not the heat, it’s the vulnerability: attribution of the 2016 spike in heat-associated deaths in Maricopa County, Arizona

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