Chronic heat stress in tropical urban informal settlements

Ramsay, Emma E.; Fleming, Genie M.; Faber, Peter; Barker, Fiona; Sweeney, Rohan; Taruc, Ruzka R.; Chown, Steven Loudon; Duffy, Grant A.

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2021.103248

Cited by 30 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 43 publications

(81 reference statements)

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“…Socio-economic conditions, which are reflected in the context of housing and environmental exposure, influence levels of heat vulnerability, heat stress, and associated health risks. Scholarly works from outside Africa-namely, developing countries such as India [11,12] and Indonesia [13]-affirm this correlation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Heat Stress Adaptation within Informal, Low-Income Urban Settlements in Africa

2022

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Climate projections indicate that persistent high temperatures and related heat stress will become a common experience in the future, across Africa. It is, therefore, important to understand challenges that might result from increasing extreme heat conditions, and how humans within urban centres can adapt. In this article, we provide a review that considers the experience of poor urban residents with extreme temperatures and adaptation strategies in relation to low-income, informal urban contexts in Africa. Our analysis is carried out across four focus countries: Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and Egypt. Only cursory insights exist in the context of informal settlements. We found that heat stress remains an overlooked topic in comparison to other climate change adaptation needs. Evidence shows that adaptation strategies varied and differed in framing, scale, and applied methods across the contexts. Adaptation strategies dominantly examine a broad variety of alternative building measures and, to a lesser degree, greening/nature-based strategies. It is important to highlight heat stress as a cross-cutting, focal topic in urban research in relation to informal settlements and generally broaden the spectrum. It is worthwhile to pay special attention to strategic actions and research designs that foresee win–win and co-beneficial options for local urban communities.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Heat Stress Adaptation within Informal, Low-Income Urban Settlements in Africa

2022

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“…Impetus is growing for local meteorological monitoring to capture microclimate across complex landscapes, including cities (Zaitchik & Tuholske 2021). Such data can be collected through low-cost sensor networks (as used here) which have been successful in the informal settlement context (Scott et al 2017;Ramsay et al 2021;Van de Walle et al 2022) and can be used to corroborate and supplement remote-sensed data (Venter et al 2020). Indeed, such information is essential to understand the magnitude and mechanisms of UHIs in informal settlement globally, and the interactions they may have with climate warming and changing temperature extremes (Chapman et al 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Local scale UHI analyses require data at fine spatial and temporal resolutions. Ambient temperature is preferred for analysing urban heat in terms of impacts on humans, yet climate data from traditional weather stations do not capture localised heat exposure in complex urban settlements (Scott et al 2017;Ramsay et al 2021) and are particularly scarce throughout the tropics (Zaitchik & Tuholske 2021). Satellite data are therefore valuable for fine scale spatial and temporal analyses where in situ data are unavailable (Zhou et al 2018), and have thus been used extensively to characterise UHIs across the globe (eg.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Elevated temperatures from UHIs can exacerbate extreme heat (Founda & Santamouris 2017;Zhao et al 2018), which has adverse impacts on human health and wellbeing (Tan et al 2010;Ebi et al 2021a). Througout the tropics, UHIs compound year-round high temperature and humidity, which is of particuclar concern for vulnerable populations such as those living in urban informal settlements (Scott et al 2017;Ramsay et al 2021) who have limited capacity to adapt (Pasquini et al 2020) and a large exisiting health burden (Ezeh et al 2017;Lilford et al 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Spatio-temporal development of the urban heat island in a socioeconomically diverse tropical city

Ramsay

Duffy

Burge

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Urban heat islands, where temperatures are elevated relative to non-urban surrounds, are near-ubiquitous in cities globally. Yet, the magnitude and form of urban heat islands in the tropics, where heat has a large morbidity and mortality burden, is less well understood, especially for socioeconomically diverse communities such as those living in urban informal settlements. We utilised 29 years of Landsat satellite-derived surface temperature, corroborated by in situ measurements, to provide a detailed spatial and temporal assessment of urban heat islands in Makassar, Indonesia, a city that is representative of rapidly growing urban settlements across the tropics. We did so with explicit consideration of vulnerable communities living informally. Our analysis identified surface urban heat islands of up to 9.2 C in long-urbanised parts of the city and 6.3 C in informal settlements, the seasonal patterns of which were driven by change in non-urban areas rather than in urban areas themselves. In recently urbanised areas, the majority of urban heat island increase occurred before areas became 50% urbanised. As tropical cities continue to expand we expect that urban heat islands will develop quickly as land is urbanised, whereas the established heat island in long-urbanised areas will remain stable in response to city expansion. Green and blue space protect some informal settlements from the worst urban heat islands and maintenance of such space will be essential to mitigate the growing heat burden from urban expansion and anthropogenic climate change. We advocate for green space to be prioritised in urban planning, redevelopment and informal settlement upgrading programs, with consideration of the unique environmental and socioeconomic context of tropical cities.

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“…chronic heat that constitutes a slower-onset hazard) (Oppermann et al 2021 ). Hazard from both extreme and chronic heat events is particularly serious in cities in the Tropics, which face a disproportionate warming trend as well as enhanced heat island effects with dense and rapid development (Ramsay et al 2021 ).…”

Section: Introduction and Rationalementioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying factors contributing to social vulnerability through a deliberative Q-Sort process: an application to heat vulnerability in Taiwan

Mabon

Shih

2022

Nat Hazards

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Extreme heat events are gaining ever more policy and societal attention under a warming climate. Although a breadth of expertises are required to understand drivers of vulnerability to hazards such as extreme heat, it is also acknowledged that expert assessments in group settings may be subject to biases and uneven power relations. In this Technical Note, we outline a structured deliberative process for supporting experts to work collaboratively to assess social vulnerability to a climate-related hazard, in this case extreme heat in Taiwanese cities. We argue that adapting elicitation approaches such as Q-Methodology for use in collaborative settings can help to organise expert discussion and enable dialogue and mutual learning, in a way that supports consensus-building on vulnerability assessment. Outcomes from our collaborative assessments suggest elderly people living alone, elderly people over 75, pre-existing circulatory diseases and level of participation in community decision-making may all be notable drivers of heat vulnerability in the Taiwanese context. Methodologically, we argue that collaborative sorting exercises offer a way to embed local and experiential knowledges into assessments of available evidence, but that strong facilitation and additional checks are necessary to ensure an inclusive process that reflects the diversity of perspectives involved.

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Chronic heat stress in tropical urban informal settlements

Cited by 30 publications

References 43 publications

Heat Stress Adaptation within Informal, Low-Income Urban Settlements in Africa

Heat Stress Adaptation within Informal, Low-Income Urban Settlements in Africa

Spatio-temporal development of the urban heat island in a socioeconomically diverse tropical city

Identifying factors contributing to social vulnerability through a deliberative Q-Sort process: an application to heat vulnerability in Taiwan

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