Urban populations are highly vulnerable to the adverse effects of heat, with heat-related mortality showing intra-urban variations that are likely due to differences in urban characteristics and socioeconomic status. The objective was to investigate the influence of urban green and urban blue, i.e., urban vegetation and water bodies, on heat-related excess mortality in the elderly above 65 years in Lisbon, Portugal between 1998 and 2008.

Original Source

A wealth of information is available on extreme heat and humidity associated with mortality for cities of the developed world, but there is a dearth in the literature for coastal cities of the developing world. The aim of the present study was to assess the effect of ambient heat on all-cause mortality on the urban population of Surat, a coastal city in India.

Original Source

Heat waves are the most significant cause of mortality in the US compared to other natural hazards. Prior studies have found increased heat exposure for individuals of lower socioeconomic status in several US cities, but few comparative analyses of the social distribution of urban heat have been conducted. To address this gap, our paper examines and compares the environmental justice consequences of urban heat risk in the three largest US cities: New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

A human body may be able to adapt to extremes of dry-bulb temperature (commonly referred to as simply temperature) through perspiration and associated evaporative cooling provided that the wet-bulb temperature (a combined measure of temperature and humidity or degree of ‘mugginess’) remains below a threshold of 35 °C. (ref. 1). This threshold defines a limit of survivability for a fit human under well-ventilated outdoor conditions and is lower for most people.

Besides other non-behavioural factors, low-light conditions significantly influence the frequency of traffic accidents in an urban environment. This paper intends to identify the impact of low-light conditions on traffic accidents in the city of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The dependence degree between light and the number of traffic accidents was analysed using the Pearson correlation, and the relation between the spatial distribution of traffic accidents and the light conditions was determined by the frequency ratio model.

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate about economic inequality in India during the post-reform period. It analyses consumption inequality through the hitherto neglected lens of non-food expenditure. Using household level consumption expenditure data from the quinquennial "thick" rounds of the National Sample Survey, the paper shows that inequality within food and non-food groups has declined, even as overall expenditure inequality has increased over time.