Merging Heat Stress Hazard and Crowding Features to Frame Risk Scenarios Within the Urban Built Environment

Abstract

Risk assessment for SLow Onset Disasters (SLODs) in the built environment combine the hazard features, and its effects on the built environment itself, with users’ exposure and vulnerability, including behavioral issues. Although different methods exist for identifying the main SLODs drivers and their trend over time and space, limited information is found to set up significant risk scenarios by effectively merging hazard and crowding’ features. Hence, this research is aimed at testing a methodology to create relevant risk scenarios for a single SLOD type, in the urban built environment. The work focuses on heat stress because of its growing incidence trend in urban areas. The methodology is applied to a neighborhood portion in Milan, Italy, which is a significant urban scenario for the considered SLOD. Through the application of quick and remote data collection methodologies, preliminary risk levels are traced over the daytime merging hazard and exposure, thus enabling a quick methodology application by practitioners. Results organize extreme and recurring risk scenarios considering relevant users’ types and behavioral patterns in respect to both the neighborhood space use and the heat stress arousal. Such scenarios can contribute to the definition of input conditions for simulation-based risk assessment.