Heat vulnerability and extreme heat risk at the metropolitan scale: A case study of Taipei metropolitan area, Taiwan

Abstract

Global climate change has intensified extreme climate events, such as torrential rain, heavy snow, heatwaves, and droughts. Among all extreme disaster events, extreme heat might lead to long and intensified heatwaves and seriously impact human living environments and ecological habitats. This study applies remote sensing to identify the spatial variation in extreme heat and principal component analysis (PCA) to explore the spatial distribution of the heat vulnerability index in the Taipei metropolitan area. Finally, a bivariate local indicator of spatial association (bivariate LISA) is used to explore the relationship between extreme heat and the heat vulnerability index. The results show that most vulnerable villages are clustered in downtown Taipei. In addition, the bivariate LISA results show an aggregation of 346 high-high clusters, indicating extreme heat and relatively high vulnerability clustered in particular areas. The findings of this study could provide the basis for proposing adequate resilience strategies for areas suffering from extreme heat based on the heat vulnerability composition.