MRI: Acquisition of a High Heat Compatible System for Interdisciplinary Research and Education on Human Thermal Exposure and Safety in Hot Climates

This award supports the purchase of a thermal manikin custom-built for indoor and outdoor research studies in extreme heat conditions. This advanced instrument measures how much heat a human body receives and mimics the thermoregulatory system’s response in different situations. Use of this instrument will avoid the dangers of exposing humans to extreme heat while measuring how heat impacts human health and performance.

Such measurements can help find better ways for individuals and organizations to cope with increasingly common and severely hot weather. More specifically, the benefits of this research may include fewer heat illnesses and deaths, improved societal well-being and productivity, improved urban planning, and reduced energy use required for air conditioning of buildings.

To advance these topics, the manikin will be paired with a state-of-the-art mobile weather station developed at Arizona State University. These combined instruments will be used to simultaneously characterize the local environment and its impact on human thermal comfort, core and skin temperature response, and sweating. These processes will be measured in various settings (e.g., desert paths, old mobile homes, etc.) and allow testing of traditional and new cooling strategies.

The research will be collaboratively performed by a diverse group of students and faculty from engineering, physical sciences, architecture, fashion, public health, nutrition, and sports sciences. The new thermal manikin will expose diverse and underrepresented student populations to new, interdisciplinary STEM research, thus promoting the participation in these fields.

With recent instrumentation advancements and custom modifications requested of the manufacturer, the acquired thermal manikin system will be the first in the world to be easily moveable, compatible with high heat, and utilized to conduct multi-site outdoor and indoor measurements. Such experimentation will produce advanced information on the mimicked human thermoregulatory response presently unavailable from simulations, human trials, or current thermal manikins.

The instrument will be used to 1) develop novel experimental methods and modeling approaches to quantify evaporative, conductive, convective, and radiative human heat exposure on 35 human body-zones and 2) to evaluate and improve indoor/outdoor thermal exposure and physiologic models and indices under oppressive heat across climate types and personal contexts. The manikin will also be used to accelerate development of a broad range of human-centric adaptations for coping with extreme heat.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.