The Construction and Validation of the Heat Vulnerability Index, a Review

Junzhe Bao, Xudong Li and Chuanhua Yu
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Junzhe Bao: School of Public Health, Wuhan University, 115 Donghu Road, Wuhan 430071, China
Xudong Li: Office of Epidemiology, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 155 Changbai Road, Changping District, Beijing 102206, China
Chuanhua Yu: School of Public Health, Wuhan University, 115 Donghu Road, Wuhan 430071, China

IJERPH, 2015, vol. 12, issue 7, 1-15

Abstract: The occurrence of extreme heat and its adverse effects will be exacerbated with the trend of global warming. An increasing number of researchers have been working on aggregating multiple heat-related indicators to create composite indices for heat vulnerability assessments and have visualized the vulnerability through geographic information systems to provide references for reducing the adverse effects of extreme heat more effectively. This review includes 15 studies concerning heat vulnerability assessment. We have studied the indicators utilized and the methods adopted in these studies for the construction of the heat vulnerability index (HVI) and then further reviewed some of the studies that validated the HVI. We concluded that the HVI is useful for targeting the intervention of heat risk, and that heat-related health outcomes could be used to validate and optimize the HVI. In the future, more studies should be conducted to provide references for the selection of heat-related indicators and the determination of weight values of these indicators in the development of the HVI. Studies concerning the application of the HVI are also needed.

Keywords: extreme heat; heat vulnerability index; vulnerability map; validation of HVI (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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