Modelling urban dwellers’ indoor heat stress to enhance heat-health warning and planning

Abstract

Due to climate change, the intensity, duration and frequency of heatwaves are likely to increase in the coming years. Excessive heat events can increase local urban heat island intensity affecting the health and wellbeing of urban dwellers vulnerable to heat stress. Heat-Health Warning Systems (HHWSs) have been developed to warn the public of impending heat events and to advise on preventable negative health outcomes. However, metrics upon which action triggers are made in HHWSs rely on reported critical outcomes, such as heat-related excess death. Thus, human exposure to heat is underestimated in current metrics and consequently, their capacity to prevent heat-related health risks remains uncertain, particularly indoors. This study investigates how indoor heat stress in urban dwellings at a city-scale can be modelled to enhance Heat-Health Warning and Planning. First, the effects of housing typologies on indoor thermal conditions are quantified in a local urban microclimate context. We then model the dynamic relationships between outdoor climate and indoor heat exposure to identify specific outdoor climatic thresholds as action triggers for alerting urban dwellers’ indoor heat stress. Based on urban microclimate data available for a city of Birmingham UK, a proof-of-principle study is presented. The result shows the presence of large variances in the heat-health action triggers across different housing typologies. This is further extended to consider the Birmingham climate projection scenarios provided by the UKCP18. Compared to the current UK Heat-Health Alert Service, we show how indoor heat stress warnings may look like and the implications for long-term heat-health planning.