Assessing Vulnerability to Heat Stress in Urban Areas. The Example of Greater London

Abstract

ISEE-0113 Background and Objective: Increasing mortality related to periods of hot weather is a direct health impact from a warming and more variable climate. Adverse health impacts of heat stress are preventable. To spatially assess vulnerability is useful to prioritize where to take action first. This work aims at developing and testing a vulnerability index to assess hot spots of vulnerability to heat stress in the urban area of Greater London. Methods: A vulnerability index to estimate the vulnerability to heat stress in urban areas has been developed. Therefore, routine data on a high spatial resolution and representing the risk factors as identified in the literature are mapped. With Principal Component Analysis the most relevant of these indicators are composed to a vulnerability index. To test the performance of the vulnerability index, daily data on temperature and spatial data on daily mortality and ambulance callout are used in a Poission regression model. Results: The comparison of groups of districts with the same level of vulnerability results in an increase in risk of death in summer by 9% for vulnerability score 2 compared to score 1 (lowest vulnerability), 16% for score 3 and constantly increases to 85% increased risk of death for districts with a score of 10 (highest vulnerability). The testing of the vulnerability score with ambulance call data results in an increase of risk from score 1 to 2 is 18%, 24% for score 3, 59% for score 4 and reaches an increase of 165% for score 10. Conclusion: The work shows that it is possible to model hot spots of vulnerability in terms of increased mortality and a higher number of ambulance callouts. The results encourage further work on hot spot analysis to better target intervention measures, but also to look into risk perception and decomposing inequalities.