Developing High-Resolution Descriptions of Urban Heat Islands: A Public Health Imperative.

Jackson Voelkel,Brendon Haggerty,Vivek Shandas

doi:10.5888/pcd13.160099

Abstract

Example of the process of creating buffers on a raster. The input data (A) is converted from vector to a raster that contains pixel values representing the results for specified distances. In this example, the raw data has the values 1 (green, representing canopy) and 0 (white, representing not-canopy). The output describes the percentage of land cover classified as canopy.

Highlights

Extreme heat events affect the most vulnerable human populations and are a lethal health hazard to urban dwellers globally; in the United States, extreme heat causes more deaths annually than all other weather events and natural hazards combined (1)
In the morning (6 AM), low-lying vegetation cover had the strongest effect on temperature, and in the afternoon (3 PM), the 2 variables for building height had the strongest effect
In the evening (7 PM), temperatures were most strongly affected by the variation in building heights

Summary

Introduction

Extreme heat events affect the most vulnerable human populations and are a lethal health hazard to urban dwellers globally; in the United States, extreme heat causes more deaths annually than all other weather events and natural hazards combined (1). Previous studies described urban heat islands as isolated, static, monolithic areas of cities. We challenged this contention by hypothesizing that diurnal temperature cycles and diverse landscape features create variation in places that amplify heat (2). A temporal description of urban heat islands would identify populations that are susceptible to heat stress, at night, when most people are asleep and unable to regulate internal body temperatures. The objective of this study was to use spatial analytics at previously unattained resolutions to answer the following research question: to what extent can we observe temporal variation in urban heat islands and the physical features that induce heat stress?

Objectives

Methods

Results