Economic Losses of Heat-Induced Reductions in Outdoor Worker Productivity: a Case Study of Europe

Abstract

European countries have experienced strong heat waves over the last two decades. The frequency and magnitude of such extreme weather events are expected to increase in the near future. Using an interdisciplinary approach, which combines meteorological, epidemiological and economic analyses, we assess the cost of heat-induced reductions in outdoor worker productivity in Europe caused by the heat waves in August of 2003, July of 2010, and July of 2015. We found that for the top ten most affected European countries, average direct economic losses in agriculture accounted for $59-90 per worker and for construction, it was $41-72 per worker. Direct economic losses were especially high in countries, such as Cyprus, Italy, and Spain. Social costs of heat-induced reductions in worker productivity in agriculture and construction account for an average of $2-3 per capita.

Escalating environmental summer heat exposure—a future threat for the European workforce

“…For instance, Sahu et al (2013) and Junge et al (2016) quantify productivity as production and power output, respectively, whereas Ioannou et al (2017) introduced a time-motion analysis to assess the effects of workplace heat on productivity and labour effort. Regardless of the method used, a graduate loss of productivity (UNDP 2016) and economic impact (Orlov et al 2019) with increasing thermal exposure is evident. Exposure-response relationships are usually established between hourly heat exposure and productivity (e.g.…”

A High Spatiotemporal Resolution Global Gridded Dataset of Historical Human Discomfort Indices

“…It is important to emphasize that while the HDIs are primarily designed for climate-health experts to gauge exposure risk to humans under different thermal environments, the spill-over effects The two versions of WBGT used in this article calculated following Gagge and Nishi [49] (Equation (10)) and the ABM (Equation (11)) are as follows: WBGT = 0.567 × T a + 0.216 × VP + 3.38 (10) WBGT _ABM = 0.567 × T a + 0.393 × VP + 3.94 (11) It must be emphasized here that neither of the two versions of WBGT (Equations (10) and 11) account for exposure to SR (or the T g ) as commonly found in literature. Such variants of WBGT (Equations (12) and (13)) [50] applicable for outdoor conditions under direct short-wave radiation, are defined as:…”

“…While the HDIs presented in this article are largely defined using the standard methods in the literature, a few of them use alternative definitions or approximations. For instance, the two versions of WBGT (Equations (10) and (11)) included in the current set of HDIs are simplified versions of the WBGT not accounting for the black globe temperature (T g ) (see [21,50,70] for extensive discussions on different formulations of WBGT employing T g ). Similarly, whereas the AT included in the dataset does not account for SR (see [32] for a variation of AT ot_ABM introduced in Equation (2)), the WCT based on Sipel and Passel (Equation 17) excludes both SR and humidity [53].…”

“…Exposure of human body to different meteorological elements, especially a combination of extremes in temperature, humidity, and/or wind that can have a disruptive impact on working conditions and labor productivity, are also frequently mentioned in health impacts literature (e.g., see [7,8] and references therein). Amongst both indoor and outdoor thermal exposures, human discomfort measures accounting for cold, heat, wind, humidity, and direct sunlight, are often considered as proxies for determining the likelihood of health risks (e.g., heat stroke and the associated mortality [9][10][11][12][13] to environment exposure), as well as the potential spike in demands of public utilities (e.g., energy demand for space cooling in residential/commercial buildings and work-spaces [14][15][16], ambulance callouts [17,18], etc. ).…”

“…In addition, a rapidly growing body of literature also highlights the importance of occupational heat stress (OHS) [9,11,13,19,20]. Usually referred to as local workplace heat stress [19], OHS predominantly account for four environmental factors, namely air temperature, humidity, wind speed, and heat radiation [19,21,22].…”