Cities are known to be hot and humid during heat waves, with sidewalks and buildings radiating heat into the air, causing temperatures to rise compared to nearby rural areas. With the addition of global warming and an increasingly urbanized population, there are recipes for rapidly increasing the number of people exposed to harmful heat. Its exposure has tripled in the last few decades-faster than previous studies have suggested-new studies show.
For the first time, according to the authors, this study shows how much of this increased exposure is the result of population growth and how much physical warming (combination of climate change and so-called cities) is the result of each city. Classified. Heat island effect.
According to scientists, the goal is to help policymakers better coordinate strategies to protect vulnerable people. “Our research is a starting point for helping people in need,” says Cascade Tuhorsuke, a geographer and co-author of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
When the human body overheats, it becomes dehydrated, the blood thickens, and the heart pumps stronger. It can also damage other organs as well. Fever is a particular threat to those who already have health complications such as heart disease. Very high thermal stress and high humidity are obstacles that can impair the body's natural cooling system (sweat) and can lead to heat exhaustion and heatstroke. In theory, even a healthy, moist person sitting in the shade can collapse when a measurement called wet-bulb temperature, which takes temperature and humidity into account, reaches 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit).
Considerable urban policy and planning efforts have been directed to the problem of increasing urban heat. “Smart” cities create new relationships and dependencies between people, technology, and the urban environment. This concept is based on the efficient, responsive, and adaptable capabilities of urban infrastructure. But to what extent do smart cities respond to the catastrophic scale and impact of urban heat threats such as wildfires and heatwaves?
The Australian Medical Association warns that fever is a "silent killer". You can see that more Australians die from the heat each year than on the streets. In Australia, heatwaves kill more than any other natural disaster. 4,444 wildfires are also expected to increase, with significant impacts on urban communities such as Australian cities and the Melbourne region. This is an urgent issue for Australian cities and urban areas when Australian climatologists warn of increasing frequency, severity, and duration of heatwaves and wildfires. Studies before the show that greenhouse gases emitted by the burning of fossil fuels continue to raise global temperatures, causing heat waves to reach this threshold in parts of the world later this century. Was shown.
However, a 2020 study shows that some areas have already achieved this regularly. Now, a new paper published in the minutes of the National Academy of Sciences on October 12 emphasizes that extreme fever is now an urgent issue.
Researchers investigated the trend of heat exposure in more than 13,000 cities from 1983 to 2016. They captured extreme heat more accurately because they used datasets that they believed were more detailed than those used in previous studies. This is especially true in places with historically few ground temperature measurements, such as sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.
Smart Urban Infrastructure
New digital technologies are permeating cities, homes, and workplaces. These perform complex tasks. Self-driving cars and cashless payment systems are examples of major changes. However, it also increases the vulnerability of cities in the event of a system failure or failure. Little is known about how these dependencies make cities very vulnerable in the event of a crisis. For example, smartphone-based wildfire and heatwave warning systems are one of the key policy responses proposed and tested as part of smart cities. However, little is known about the benefits and challenges of such reactions.
With the emergence of smart city technology and infrastructure invisibility and the potential for urban heat-related threats and crises, some important considerations are hidden in the shadows. This includes discussions on financial regulation, decision-making processes, and security. These often permeate legal authority, violence, and intent to shape and structure the experience of everyday city life.
System resilience or collapse?
An intelligent system is not resilient. Outside the design field, it tends to break down suddenly. Energy or IT system failures can lead to a chain of the crisis of intelligent urban response capabilities against thermal threats and disasters. During the heatwave, the increased need for cooling mechanisms such as air conditioning and cooling can cause overloaded systems to fail. The rapid expansion of mobile and computer-aided warning and warning systems can make people risk-sensitive. However, it also creates dependencies for the tasks you are currently managing and dependencies on external agents. The relationship between emergency communication processes and protocols is an important area where vertical allowed, often slow communication needs to interact in real-time with horizontal networked participatory processes.
The new study "is an important step in thinking more about human exposure to heat, both now and in the future," said Jennifer Vanos, who has not studied the health effects of heat at Arizona State University. Participated in the study. However, she warns that there are other factors to consider when designing a thermal health policy. For example, some people have easy access to air conditioning and suffer from intense heat waves, while those with health problems or working outdoors are more likely to get sick. Shrimp states that including these differences in vulnerabilities could improve the model in the future.
Urban heat threats and disasters have an impact on the critical infrastructure that undergirds the smart city response to such disasters and their associated technology, infrastructures, and networked systems – namely in the areas of energy, water, ICT, and transports.
Understanding the dynamics and tensions of new technologies, networks, and infrastructure is important, especially when urban systems are threatened or disrupted. Despite acknowledging the complexity of the smart city debate, policy and industry commentary draws a clear line between society and technology. There is an urgent need to develop new understandings and methods for implementing the potential and potential of smart cities to successfully address urban heat threats and disasters in many cities.
Penulis: Diva Maharani | Illustrator: Akbar Nugroho
