Repurposing Mesoscale Traffic Models for Insights into Traveler Heat Exposure Mitigation: ICARUS and the case of Phoenix

Keywords: Climate Change, Traveler Heat Exposure
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 13

Abstract

Climate change is poised to significantly increase heat exposure, which poses considerable health risk to city residents. Yet, there remains limited insights into how individuals experience heat and what combinations of behavioral and infrastructural changes reduce exposure most effectively. Extant Heat exposure assessment centered on place-based exposure. Yet, people’s cumulative heat exposure is an amalgamation of their experience traversing their environments, where the nuances of behaviors and infrastructure are critical. In this study, we developed a travel simulation environment, ICAURS, which captures the heat exposure resulting from people’s socio-physical interactions with the dynamic built environment. Using the Phoenix, Arizona metro region as our case, we use ICARUS to estimate the daily movements of 4.68 million travelers including 1.17 million walking and biking (active) trips to assess: i) the performance of ICARUS; ii) corridors of heavy exposure active travel; iii) population with heavy heat exposure. This work provides a framework for prioritizing heat-related public health benefits in the context of urbanization and climate change.