Phoenix Regional Heat and Air Quality Knowledge Repository
This repository houses peer-reviewed literature, data sets, reports, and other materials generated by researchers, practitioners, and other regional stakeholders that may be informative for local and regional efforts mitigating the adverse impacts of heat. The collection is intended to serve as a resource for anyone looking for information on top research findings, reports, or initiatives related to heat and air quality. This includes community, local, state, and regional partners and other interested parties contributing to heat and air quality planning, preparedness, and response activities.
More Information: The Phoenix Regional Heat and Air Quality Knowledge Repository is product of the Healthy Urban Environments (HUE) initiative in partnership with the Urban Climate Research Center.
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- Creators: Bentz, Darcie
- Creators: Buyantuev, Alexander
Context:
With rapidly expanding urban regions, the effects of land cover changes on urban surface temperatures and the consequences of these changes for human health are becoming progressively larger problems.
Objectives:
We investigated residential parcel and neighborhood scale variations in urban land surface temperature, land cover, and residents’ perceptions of landscapes and heat illnesses in the subtropical desert city of Phoenix, AZ USA.
Methods:
We conducted an airborne imaging campaign that acquired high resolution urban land surface temperature data (7 m/pixel) during the day and night. We performed a geographic overlay of these data with high resolution land cover maps, parcel boundaries, neighborhood boundaries, and a household survey.
Results:
Land cover composition, including percentages of vegetated, building, and road areas, and values for NDVI, and albedo, was correlated with residential parcel surface temperatures and the effects differed between day and night. Vegetation was more effective at cooling hotter neighborhoods. We found consistencies between heat risk factors in neighborhood environments and residents’ perceptions of these factors. Symptoms of heat-related illness were correlated with parcel scale surface temperature patterns during the daytime but no corresponding relationship was observed with nighttime surface temperatures.
Conclusions:
Residents’ experiences of heat vulnerability were related to the daytime land surface thermal environment, which is influenced by micro-scale variation in land cover composition. These results provide a first look at parcel-scale causes and consequences of urban surface temperature variation and provide a critically needed perspective on heat vulnerability assessment studies conducted at much coarser scales.
Preventing heat-associated morbidity and mortality is a public health priority in Maricopa County, Arizona (United States). The objective of this project was to evaluate Maricopa County cooling centers and gain insight into their capacity to provide relief for the public during extreme heat events. During the summer of 2014, 53 cooling centers were evaluated to assess facility and visitor characteristics. Maricopa County staff collected data by directly observing daily operations and by surveying managers and visitors. The cooling centers in Maricopa County were often housed within community, senior, or religious centers, which offered various services for at least 1500 individuals daily. Many visitors were unemployed and/or homeless. Many learned about a cooling center by word of mouth or by having seen the cooling center’s location. The cooling centers provide a valuable service and reach some of the region’s most vulnerable populations. This project is among the first to systematically evaluate cooling centers from a public health perspective and provides helpful insight to community leaders who are implementing or improving their own network of cooling centers.