Reducing Individual Heat Stress through Path Planning

Abstract

Heat stress is a serious risk, which affects groups such as the elderly or patients with chronic diseases in particular, and is especially pronounced in cities. The ageing of society, progressive urbanization and climate change are increasing the risk of people being affected by heat stress. One way to reduce the risk is to adapt everyday behaviour. To encourage and support such a change of behaviour, we propose a two-step approach. The first step is a route planner for pedestrians which can find a route with minimal heat exposure. The second step is a tool that helps the user to select the time of day with minimal heat exposure to venture outside. The route planner is then used to calculate the heat stress and present the optimal route at that point in time. We evaluate our approach for the city of Karlsruhe. Our results show that the combined approach, as well as its individual steps, can reduce heat exposure and therefore the heat stress for typical daily tasks in a European city.

A System for Generating Customized Pleasant Pedestrian Routes Based on OpenStreetMap Data

“…Their results suggest that a decrease in exposure compensates for an increase in the route’s length, thus motivating the development of a route planning tool dedicated to the minimization of air pollution exposure. With the aim of reducing pedestrians’ heat stress, Russig and Bruns [ 27 ] proposed a route planner system which is able to find a route with minimal heat exposure.…”

Pedestrian Routing and Perspectives: WayFinder’s Route down the Lane—Come on with the Rain

“…Route planners that support other means of transport have attracted less attention in the literature [5]. Moreover, previously developed solutions for specific users, such as those with physical disabilities, typically have limited applicability due either to sophisticated methods or to lack of easily available data and technology [6]. As a result, some route planners exist as proof-of-concept implementations limited to certain areas and specific conditions.…”

“…Supporting pedestrians in route planning in urban environments is timely, as urban populations are growing and urban citizens are particularly exposed to extreme weather-related events such as high temperatures and pluvial floods. Therefore, route planners can be of value to individual citizens, especially pedestrians and those vulnerable with limited mobility and health problems [6].…”

“…A large body of scientific literature reports studies by architects and urban planners on mapping areas that are either recommended or excluded for use by pedestrians or other users of public spaces during specific extreme events, for example, [6,19,20] such as high temperatures [21] and pluvial flooding [22]. The former (i.e., heat) can cause risk to human health and well-being.…”

“…Therefore, public urban spaces can be only partially adapted to extreme heat and citizens also require other types of support, especially those in vulnerable groups such as the elderly or children. In such situations, there is a need for pedestrian navigation tools that facilitate the planning of daily activities during heat events [6].…”