Pedestrian level urban outdoor heat exposure modeling and mapping

Many cities are experiencing more frequent and more intense extreme heat events presenting an increasingly important public health hazard. But there is considerable variability of urban heat within cities resulting in disparate extreme heat impacts on different populations. Intra-city heat exposure varies as a function of multiple factors including building heights, tree canopy cover and surface characteristics.

This project uses urban microclimate modeling and geospatial technologies to estimate and map the urban heat distribution at a spatial resolution of 1m and at the pedestrian level. Based on the hyperlocal variability of heat distribution, this project further evaluates the daily heat exposure of pedestrians walking from home to nearby destinations including parks, playgrounds, and public transit stations.

This project provides a detailed understanding of how urban heat impacts people’s daily lives. This research also evaluates the impact of extreme weather on the heat exposure taking into consideration the socio-economic characteristics across neighborhoods. This project helps urban planners and city governments to develop plans to enhance climate resilience.

High-resolution urban heat data developed by the project is disseminated through public websites to benefit public health researchers and urban environmental planning.

Cities are experiencing more frequent and more intense extreme heat events which are an increasingly important public health hazard. Knowing the spatial distribution and the temporal variation of heat is of critical importance to understand the conditions that result in extreme heat exposure. The project applies geospatial data analytics, urban microclimate modeling, parallel geocomputing, and nationally available high-resolution geospatial datasets to model and map urban outdoor heat exposure.

High-resolution heat exposure maps provide new understanding of the distribution of outdoor heat exposure across cities. This project also estimates heat exposure for routes connecting different origin-destination points. Researchers examine the spatial distribution of outdoor heat exposure among different socio-economic groups across neighborhoods to identify populations particularly at risk.

This project develops data products and analysis to inform strategies to mitigate and adapt to the extreme heat in cities using a data portal and web-based geovisualization. The outcomes of this project help urban planners and city governments to develop plans to enhance climate resilience.

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.