Survey Working Group Meeting

Survey Working Group Meeting

Sep 12, 2024 - 2:10 PM
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This week, our speaker is Jia Hu. The title and abstract are given below.

Title: Multi-city Assessments of Human Exposure to Extreme Heat during Heat Waves in the United States

Abstract: There is a lack of understanding of the complex spatiotemporal patterns of heat exposure during heat waves, and the impact of urbanization intensity and urban morphology on heat exposure in urban thermal environments. To address these issues, we used mean radiant temperature (Tmrt) as an index to indicate human exposure to extreme heat, and generated hourly heat exposure maps at a 1-m spatial resolution in Summer 2020 for heat wave and non-heat wave days across three diversely urbanized and climatically different U.S. cities (Riverside, CA; Des Moines, IA; and Boston, MA) using the SOlar LongWave Environmental Irradiance Geometry model and multi-source remote sensing and GIS data. Based on these high-frequency and microscale maps, we found that heat exposure during heat waves was enhanced by 6℃ to 10℃ compared to non-heat wave conditions, with the main differences occurring in the early afternoon between 12 pm and 2 pm. We found that hot cities (Riverside, 63℃) had higher heat exposure than warm cities (Des Moines and Boston, 53℃ and 51℃) during heat waves. Heat exposure in urban core areas was approximately 5℃ higher than that in rural areas during heat waves. Additionally, we found that sky view factor was the most important urban morphology factor influencing heat exposure, with a relative importance of over 67% in these cities. The findings of this study can be useful in developing urban policies to improve urban thermal environments in diverse urban settings, and our transferable framework can potentially be applied to other cities for heat exposure studies.