Research Project 2

  • Rapid urban growth, significant levels of informality, and increasingly stretched health services, intersecting with observed past and projected future temperature increases, have resulted in a critical emerging public health challenge in African cities. 
  • High ambient temperatures can cause considerable morbidity and mortality in urban areas. The magnitude and pattern of health impacts are determined not just by temperature gradients, but also by geographic, socio-environmental, and demographic factors. Understanding this complexity is key to developing effective responses that fit the spatial and demographic heterogeneity of cities. 
  • This project, which will take place in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and Johannesburg, South Africa, aims to be the most in-depth study of the risks that heat and living in cities pose in Africa to date. 
  • This will be in aid developing an early warning system aimed at mitigating the impacts of heat for highly vulnerable groups.

Vulnerability and heat hazard mapping in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire

Methodology to create a spatially and demographically stratified heat-health outcome forecast model