EAPSI: Urban Microclimate Monitoring in Seoul, Korea: Identifying and Investigating Fine-Scale Heat-Health Relationships

Herdt Alexandria J, Lubbock TX

Investigators

Abstract

The city of Seoul is the 6th most densely populated city in the world, and has a growing metropolitan area. The increasing density has enhanced the urban heat island (UHI) effect over the last four decades. This UHI along with projected warming over the coming century will cause heightened energy use and heat stress. Changes to the built environment can provide heat adaptation strategies and improve urban sustainability, helping human health and the economy of the city. Quantifying the complex urban environment at human scales of exposures with mobile and place-based measurements is needed to address these issues and guide climate adaptation in large, growing cities. The goal of this project is thus to quantify intra-urban air and surface temperatures on days of extreme heat, and map these and other meteorological variables to identify, at a fine-scale, the locations of increased risk of heat stress and hazards that will impact human health. This research will be conducted at Seoul National University in collaboration with Dr. Joon Kim and Dr. Kyu Rang Kim of the National Institute of Meteorological Sciences, both noted experts in urban microclimate processes. The proposed research will determine the locations of the highest surface temperatures in the neighborhood of Gangnam in Seoul, Korea, and link urban surface characteristics with measured ambient variables of radiation, surface temperature, and air temperature. Within these hot urban microclimates, the human energy budget will be modeled using the COMFA energy budget model to predict heat stress, and fine-scale heat stress hazards will be identified and mapped. In major metropolitan areas, such as Seoul, pinpointing the zones where an individual is at escalated risks of heat-related illnesses or surface burn hazard provides important information to focus mitigation and adapting strategies to lessen energy use and protect human health. Such multi-scale modeling of urban and neighborhood ambient environments is one of the major frontiers of mathematical geosciences and the interdisciplinary perspectives will advance the fundamental knowledge of fine-scale urban surface micrometeorology. This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the National Research Foundation of Korea.