A Raster-Based Subdividing Indicator to Map Urban Heat Vulnerability: A Case Study in Sydney, Australia

Wei Zhang, Phil McManus and Elizabeth Duncan
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Wei Zhang: School of Geographical Sciences, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
Phil McManus: School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW 2006, Australia
Elizabeth Duncan: School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW 2006, Australia

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 11, 1-20

Abstract: Assessing and mapping urban heat vulnerability has developed significantly over the past decade. Many studies have mapped urban heat vulnerability with a census unit-based general indicator (CGI). However, this kind of indicator has many problems, such as inaccurate assessment results and lacking comparability among different studies. This paper seeks to address this research gap and proposes a raster-based subdividing indicator to map urban heat vulnerability. We created a raster-based subdividing indicator (RSI) to map urban heat vulnerability from 3 aspects: exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. We applied and compared it with a raster-based general indicator (RGI) and a census unit-based general indicator (CGI) in Sydney, Australia. Spatial statistics and analysis were used to investigate the performance among those three indicators. The results indicate that: (1) compared with the RSI framework, 67.54% of very high heat vulnerability pixels were ignored in the RGI framework; and up to 83.63% of very high heat vulnerability pixels were ignored in the CGI framework; (2) Compared with the previous CGI framework, a RSI framework has many advantages. These include more accurate results, more flexible model structure, and higher comparability among different studies. This study recommends using a RSI framework to map urban heat vulnerability in the future.

Keywords: heat vulnerability; indicators; mapping; demography; public health; Sydney (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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