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Experts said on Friday, while speaking at a webinar organized as part of the G20’s Urban20 group, that rising heat in cities should be treated as a catastrophe and taken into account when planning for urban areas.
Speaking at the discussion on urban heat islands and mitigation plans, Mini Sastry, an extreme heat planning expert with the United Nations Environment Programme, said the way cities are being planned contributes to the problem.
“Pockets of cities experience warmer temperatures compared to suburban or rural areas,” she added, adding that this was the result of human activity.
“Reducing green infrastructure is a major factor,” she said.
For example, she said, in a study of temperatures in Bengaluru in April, she found that the lowest temperatures were in the outskirts of the city, where the green cover is more, while Commercial Street, a busy shopping area, was 4-5 degrees warmer. percentage. .
It said anthropogenic heat, generated by human activity, was added by buildings being cooled from the inside. Heat and pollution from vehicles has also caused temperatures to rise in cities. She said air maps and surface temperature of cities could be studied to see what went wrong in their planning. She said satellite data from ISRO and the US Geological Survey is available.
“It is important to raise awareness among city officials about the available data. Urban heat island maps are not part of heat action plans, which need to be done.”
Later in the discussion, Umamaheshwaran Rajsekar, urban resilience advisor at the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, said the conversation about urban heat islands had been limited, while the impact had been felt over the past two decades. He said every degree increase in temperatures shortened the life of the infrastructure, from transformers to roads.
He said the building bylaws do not consider heat as a decisive influence, but must take into account not only heat but flooding in urban areas.
“The biggest challenge is looking at heat as a disaster and now it is being seen as stress. Except for Odisha, no other country recognizes it as a disaster.”
He said heat should be included in city planning guidelines and taught as an elective for students of architecture, planning and engineering.
The impact of rising urban temperatures on population health was being seen in the healthcare sector, according to Dr Purvi Patel, senior consultant at the Federal Ministry of Health’s National Climate Change and Human Health Programme.
She said that diseases of the cardiovascular system, respiratory system and kidneys are the main causes of death due to heat. Citing a 2019 study, she said that a higher temperature during pregnancy is associated with lower birth weight babies.
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