Understanding temperature related health risk in context of urban land use changes

Abstract

A city's climate is affected both by global warming and the local factors such as built form and the landscape. The temperature related impacts of climate change make urban areas more vulnerable particularly due to higher population concentration as well as heat island effect. Cities in India are already experiencing enhanced temperature and precipitation related impacts of climate change and extreme events, e.g., >2 癈 warming in some places. This study describes a case of Ahmedabad � a city of around 5 million people (Census, 2011) and currently almost 7.8 million, located in the hot and humid western part of India to understand the current temperature-related mortality impacts and the role of land use. Satellite images (MODIS from NASA), temperature data from India Meteorological Department (IMD) and daily all-cause mortality from Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation between 2001 and 2015 have been used to create a distributed lag non-linear model. Using land surface temperature for mortality risk assessment gives significantly different results as compared to using air temperature for mortality risk assessment. This indicates impacts of localized temperature variations on mortality risks. Thus, the microclimate in a city as represented by land surface temperatures is a better indicator for estimating relative risk of temperature related mortality as compared to air temperature. The study also infers that with increase in built-up spaces by 1% in the land use mix, the relative risk of heat related mortality increases by 0.59 points at 40 癈 and by 0.78 points at 45 癈. � 2021