DDL is joining forces with other researchers across UNC to investigate the nexus of urban heat, electric grid infrastructure, and health equity with $5,000 in seed funding from a UNC Creativity Hub grant.
The hottest days in the summer are exposing numerous vulnerabilities across low-income, Black, urban, and elderly populations. Extreme summer heat also correlates with the greatest peak demand days on North Carolina’s electricity grid, and in the future could overwhelm our healthcare system with patients experiencing fatal heat stroke, exhaustion, and respiratory disease. We need better data and tools to build equitable and resilient cities, electric grids, and health care systems under extreme heat circumstances.
The project will integrate research at the forefront of climate science, energy systems, and public health equity to explore how changing demand for air conditioning, increased exposure to heat, and estimated access to cooler buildings and public spaces will change in North Carolina. Through this work, we’ll develop a scalable framework around the urban heat, electric grid infrastructure, and the health equity nexus that can be used to investigate the same issues in other areas across the country.
To identify communities placed at risk, we will develop three major tools documenting heat risk across space, time, and health indicators. Drawing from geospatial modeling, energy system analysis, and policy analysis, our team will map and identify where major risks are posed by extreme heat days caused by climate change. For instance, a map showing which populations are most affected by the urban heat island effect will inform heat-related mortality and morbidity risk. Heat-related mortality in the US directly causes more deaths (around 1,500 per year) than other severe weather events.
In addition, we’ll develop a model exploring the timing of electricity generation and grid dynamics between increased demand for air conditioning and risks of blackouts or areas where thermal cooling is needed. This can help planners understand how emerging storage and grid management can reduce the risk of blackouts, maintain reliability, and mitigate climate change.
From a health equity perspective, we will also document how income, race, ethnicity, and other risk factors inform strategies to evaluate heat exposure and improve health outcomes.
The intended study can:
1) Outline the populations most likely to be placed at risk of health-related heat and energy stressors;
2) Identify priority intervention locations and technologies in the electric grid, and;
3) Work with healthcare facilities and municipal governments to reduce heat-related fatalities, particularly to address racial disparities.
This study will build off previous work DDL has done regarding urban heat and equity, like our citizen science campaign exploring urban heat in Chapel Hill and our study investigating the disproportionate impacts of the Urban Heat Island Effect in major U.S. cities.
The team is led by Noah Kittner (Assistant Professor of Environmental Sciences and Engineering), Cassandra Davis (Assistant Professor of Public Policy), Angel Hsu (Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Environment, Energy and Ecology), Ihoema Iruku (Assistant Research Professor of Public Policy), Richard Smith (Distinguished Professor of Statistics and Operations Research), and Jason West (Assistant Professor of Environmental Sciences and Engineering).
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