Heatwave-induced human health risk assessment in megacities based on heat stress-social vulnerability-human exposure framework

Abstract

Assessing heatwave-induced human health risk is of critical importance in order to mitigate hazards caused by extreme environmental events. Air temperature or land surface temperature in previous studies was often used to characterize the severity of heatwaves, and human perception of the thermal environment was neglected as a key component in the heatwave-induced risk assessment. In order to redress this issue, in this study we applied the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) to represent human thermal comfort perception and embedded the measure within an assessment framework of heat stress-social vulnerability-human exposure. The heatwave-induced human health risk was then evaluated in Wuhan City, China across 177 blocks covering the entire city area and local risk governance measures were also explored based on risk zoning. The results showed that spatial patterns of heatwave-induced human health risk followed a decreasing trend from the city center towards the surrounding areas, with the average risk of the main urban area being 1.6 times that beyond the metropolitan development area. Through the heatwave-induced human health risk zoning, about 73.45% of the 177 blocks in Wuhan City demonstrated a positive relationship between heat stress and human exposure, and both were opposite with social vulnerability. Multiple linear regression between UTCI and the proportion of greenspace, water body and construction land indicated that, more blue or green infrastructure should be integrated within the urban fabric to help mitigate heat stress particularly in the main urban area, while in the metropolitan development area construction land dominating heat stress should be strictly regulated. Furthermore, protecting vulnerable groups such as left-behind children and elderly people should be a priority in rural areas that were generally associated with higher levels of social vulnerability. This study proposed a new heatwave-induced human health risk framework with a local evidence in Wuhan City, and further emphasized that risk zoning could be used as a basic yet important approach to facilitating more effective urban planning guidelines for risk governance.