Context: The CDC estimates over 600 people die from heat exposure in the US each year and many more are hospitalized for heat-related illnesses like heat stroke. Cities are hot places for many reasons (like replacing trees with buildings) but not everyone in the city is equally at risk of heat exposure. Estimating personal heat exposure is an important task so that we can focus resources on those most at risk. How variable is personal exposure to heat in a neighborhood or across a city? How can we measure this heterogeneity in heat exposure and what can we do with this information?
Action: I helped developed a new way of measuring personal heat exposure – by asking individuals to carry around tiny temperature sensors as they go about their daily lives (thus measuring their Individually Experienced Temperature or “IET”). I conducted research in Boston’s South End and in five Phoenix, AZ, neighborhoods to assess the variability of IETs during hot summer conditions.
Results: I found a surprising heterogeneity in IETs in both Boston and Phoenix and identified useful factors to help us understand why there were such differences between neighbors. In Boston, I organized a series of outreach events such as public lectures, a walking tour, a gardening class, a bingo game, and a curated Twitter presence (@temptalker #BYOThermometer). In Phoenix, we created Individual Reports for participants so they could compare their IETs with that of their neighbors. In December, 2019, we submitted a paper about analytical best practices for dealing with IET data.
Click below for links and resources:
- Published Papers
- Heterogeneity in IETs within an Urban Neighborhood (Boston’s South End) in
the International Journal of Biometeorology alongside Dave Hondula and Japonica Brown-Saracino - Opportunities and Challenges for Personal Heat Exposure Research in Environmental Health Perspectives alongside 14 co-authors
- Technology Use, Exposure to Natural Hazards, and Being Digitally Invisible: Implications for Policy Analytics in Policy and Internet
- Toward precision governance: infusing data into public management of environmental hazards in Public Management Review
- Heterogeneity in IETs within an Urban Neighborhood (Boston’s South End) in
- News coverage in the South End News (here and here) by Michele Maniscalco
- From the Phoenix project: a poster with preliminary results, our published data (on the ASU server and LTER network), and an article about the project in Power Ranch Living, a publication in one of our study neighborhoods
- A report on our Phoenix research via the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder
- A “master version” of the Individualized Reports we created for each research participant in the Phoenix study
Evan Kuras 