Vulnerability mapping for heat risks in the elderly population. Amsterdam Speech Marco Morabito m.morabito@ibimet.cnr.it Coauthor a.crisci@ibimet.cnr.it

1. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Vulnerability mapping
for heat risks
in the elderly population
Morabito Marco & Alfonso Crisci
Institute of Biometeorology of the Italian National Research Council
m.morabito@ibimet.cnr.it

2. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Summary
1. Study description of mapping the heat-related elderly risk in
several Italian cities.
2. Suggestion for the Heat-Shield Project: a proposal of
occupational heat-wave vulnerability mapping.

3. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Urban-Hazard Risk Analysis:
Mapping of Heat-Related Risks
in the Elderly in Major Italian Cities
Main aim:
Development of high-resolution daytime and night-time heat-related population
risk maps, specifically referring to the elderly (people aged 65 or over) and to
summer (May-September), for the major Italian cities with different geographical
features (coastal and inland at different latitudes).
Hazard layer
Exposure layer
Vulnerability layer
Main materials:
1. Daytime and night-time summer LST layers
2. Total population
3. Elderly population

4. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Urban-Hazard Risk Analysis:
Mapping of Heat-Related Risks
in the Elderly in Major Italian Cities
Period of study:
May-September over a 13-year period (2001–2013)
Study areas:
Eleven major Italian cities with more than 200,000
inhabitants were selected from all over the country
City characteristics
• Inland plain cities: Milan, Padua, Bologna and Florence
• Hybrid inland plain/hill city: Turin (average altitude of 239 m a.s.l)
• Hybrid coastal/inland city: Rome more than 20 km distance between the city-
centre and the seaside
• Coastal plain cites: Genoa, Bari, Naples, Palermo and Catania
Köppen climate classification of cities
• Humid, Subtropical climate with little or no influence from the sea, and moderately hot summers: Milan, Padua,
Turin and Bologna.
• Borderline humid Subtropical and Mediterranean climate, with a strong (Genoa) and moderate (Florence) influence
from the sea and hot-humid summers.
• Typical Mediterranean climate, with significant influence from the sea and hot-dry summers: Rome, Naples, Bari,
Palermo and Catania.

5. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Urban-Hazard Risk Analysis:
Mapping of Heat-Related Risks
in the Elderly in Major Italian Cities
Study design:
Crichton’s
Risk Triangle
framework
A hazard-risk assessment
methodology adopted through the
ASCCUE (Adaptation Strategies for
Climate Change in the Urban
Environment) project.Crichton, 1999
If any component or “side” of the triangle is zero, then there is no risk
Natural hazard:
defined as the LST increase
Total population
census data
Elderly population
(over 65)

6. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Urban-Hazard Risk Analysis:
Mapping of Heat-Related Risks
in the Elderly in Major Italian Cities
Data used in the study:
Natural hazard layer
Remote sensing MODIS
data products
The ESA (European Space Agency)
Globcover land cover dataset
Daytime and nighttime
LST at 8 days temporal
and 1-km spatial
resolution (MOD11A2)
NDVI at 16 days
temporal and at 250-m
spatial resolution
(MYD13Q1)
Based on 22 land cover classes
as per the UN-FAO Land Cover
Classification System at 300-m
spatial resolution
Geostatistical and GIS procedures (written in R-language, i.e. the Geospatial Data Abstraction Library)
were used to homogenize the different spatial resolution of data layers
The monthly LST at
1-km resolution
Resampled at
250-m
resolution
Resampled at
Summer (May-Sep) LST
at 100-m resolution
DOWNSCALING PROCEDURE

7. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Urban-Hazard Risk Analysis:
Mapping of Heat-Related Risks
in the Elderly in Major Italian Cities
Data used in the study: Exposure and vulnerability layers
The Joint Research Centre (JRC) has produced a reaster dataset
representing the 1-Km2 European population density on a 100-m
grid by using the downscaling method described in Gallego
http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/population-
density-disaggregated-with-corine-land-cover-2000-2

8. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Urban-Hazard Risk Analysis:
Mapping of Heat-Related Risks
in the Elderly in Major Italian Cities
Work-flow of the spatial urban-hazard risk analysis employed to develop
the final mapping of the Heat-related Elderly Risk Index (HERI)
Normalization procedure
(based on the Hazard Density Index)
Individual variables are
normalized by dividing each
variable value from the
maximum value of that variable
across the complete study area
Weighted-layers procedure
The exposure and vulnerability
layers were combined in a single
“exposed and vulnerable” layer
(each weighted at 50%) which
was spatially combined with the
hazard layer (weighted at 50%)
HERI
(value between 0 and 1)
To avoid subjective manipulation
all weightings were kept equal

9. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Urban-Hazard Risk Analysis:
Mapping of Heat-Related Risks
in the Elderly in Major Italian Cities
Results:
Daytime HERI Nighttime HERI
Maps of daytime and nighttime heat-related elderly risk (HERI) levels
in the main inland Italian cities during the 2001–2013 summers (May-September).

10. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Urban-Hazard Risk Analysis:
Mapping of Heat-Related Risks
in the Elderly in Major Italian Cities
Results:
Maps of daytime and nighttime heat-related elderly risk (HERI) levels
in the main coastal Italian cities during the 2001–2013 summers (May-September).
Daytime HERI Nighttime HERI

11. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Urban-Hazard Risk Analysis:
Mapping of Heat-Related Risks
in the Elderly in Major Italian Cities
Results:
Daytime heat-related
elderly risk index levels
for the most populous
inland Italian cities during
the 2001–2013 summers
(May-September).
Interestingly,
urban areas with the
hazardous HERI level
were not necessarily
characterized by the
highest daytime LST

12. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Urban-Hazard Risk Analysis:
Mapping of Heat-Related Risks
in the Elderly in Major Italian Cities
Results: Critical heat-risk urban areas identified with up-to-street-level details
Information useful to plan short-term (i.e. allocation of water supply, temporary health services, preparation
of specific transport to cooling centres) and medium/long-term (i.e. encouraging greenings area,
modification of buildings surfaces) intervention strategies.

13. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Suggestion for the Heat-Shield Project
Mapping of Occupational Heat-Related Risks
in Major European Cities
We are actually working on the Heat-Wave classification and climatology
over the major European cities and on the heat-wave risk for vulnerable people
EuroHEAT (Improving Public Health Responses to extreme weather/heat-waves) project
• Periods of at least 2 days with Tappmax
exceeding the 90th percentile of the
monthly distribution
or
• Periods of at least 2 days in which
Tmin exceeds the 90th percentile &
Tappmax exceeds the median monthly
value
D’Ippoliti et al., 2010
Heat wave (HW) definition
Duration
• Short HW: duration < the median
• Long HW: duration ≥ the median
Intensity
• Low intensity HW: Tappmax < 95th perc
• High intensity HW: Tappmax ≥ 95th perc
Timing
• The first HW of each summer
• HWs that occurred between 1 and 3 days after the previous one;
• HWs that occurred 3 or more days after the previous one
HW characteristics
There is no universally accepted heat-wave definition
Based on WMO description:
heat-waves are understood to be periods of unusually hot and dry or hot and humid weather
with a detailed onset and cessation, a duration of at least two–three days,
usually with a discernible impact on human and natural systems.
WMO-No. 1142, 2015

14. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Suggestion for the Heat-Shield Project
Heat-wave classification (Hazard) over the 28-EU member countries capitals
Percentage of heat-wave days for the period 1980-1997 (May-September)

15. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Suggestion for the Heat-Shield Project
Heat-wave classification (Hazard) over the 28-EU member countries capitals
Percentage of heat-wave days for the period 1998-2015 (May-September)

16. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Period 1998-2015
Increase of the zonal flux
over the NW Europe
Decrease over the South-
Eastern and Norhtern Europe
Low
pressure
High
pressure
Suggestion for the Heat-Shield Project
Climatological interpretation of the HW-geographical shift over Europe
Decrease of the zonal flux
over the Northern Europe
Increase over the
South-Eastern Europe
Period 1980-1997
High
pressure
Low
pressure

17. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Suggestion for the Heat-Shield Project
Exposure and vulnerability layers

18. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Suggestion for the Heat-Shield Project
Heat–related elderly (≥ 75 years old) and children (≤ 4 years old) risk maps
HAZARD
layer
EXPOSED &
VULNERABLE layer
% of HW
days
Seasonal average
number of long HWs
Population density
(ab./km2)
% of vulnerable people
(elderly and children)
Each scaled 0-1 and weighted 50% Each scaled 0-1 and weighted 50%
Heat-related Vulnerable Risk
(value between 0 – 1)
(HAZARD layer x 0.50) + (EXPOSURE & VULNERABLE layer x 0.50)
< 0.2 very low; 0.2 – 0.4: low; 0.4 – 0.6: moderate; 0.6 – 0.8 high; > 0.8 very high
Heat-Vulnerability Risk levels

19. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Suggestion for the Heat-Shield Project
Heat–related elderly (≥ 75 years old) risk map for the period 1980 - 1997

20. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Suggestion for the Heat-Shield Project
Heat–related elderly (≥ 75 years old) risk map for the period 1997 - 2015

21. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Suggestion for the Heat-Shield Project
Heat–related children (≤ 4 years old) risk map for the period 1980 - 1997

22. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Suggestion for the Heat-Shield Project
Heat–related children (≤ 4 years old) risk map for the period 1998 - 2015

23. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
Suggestion for the Heat-Shield Project
Development of occupational heat-wave vulnerability mapping
• Hazard layer: Heat-wave parameters (i.e. the % of the HW days, long HWs, intense
HWs, …)
Assessment of a Heat–related Occupational Risk Index for the main European cities
Mapping City-specific Heat-Wave-related
Occupational Risk in Europe
• Exposure layer: Population density of people aged 20-65 years (working-age) or
others age chategories
• Vulnerable layer: the city-specific % of the working-age population employed in
specific occupational activities, i.e. those included in the Heat-Shield project:
• Manifacturing
• Construction
• Transportation
• Tourism
• Agricolture
Are these data available over the
main European countries/cities?
http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/lfs/data/database

24. Heat-Shield Meeting
Workshop Vulnerability Mapping – May 17, The Netherlands
For more information: Marco Morabito
m.morabito@ibimet.cnr.it