RESEARCH - Risk and Resilience

RECENT RESEARCH

February 13, 2015: International Association of Urban Climate publishes Rosenthal’s urban climate and neighborhood risk and vulnerability to extreme heat events research

Figure 1. Mortality Rate Ratios for seniors age 65 and older (MRR65+) by New York City Community District (CD, n=59), left; and United Hospital Fund (UHF) neighborhood (n=42), right. The MRR65+ shows excess mortality during very hot days (maximum heat index ≥ 100 °F) compared to all MaylSeptember days, 1997–2006. Image from IAUC Climate Newsletter, Issue No. 54, Dec. 2014

Joyce Klein Rosenthal, an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Mdes Risk and Resilience co-director, has had her recent research on New York City’s urban climate and neighborhood risk and vulnerability to extreme heat events featured in the Winter 2014 edition of new quarterly newsletter – Urban Climate News – published by the International Association of Urban Climate (IAUC).

The International Association for Urban Climate (IAUC) is an organization seeking membership from those with scientific, scholarly and technical interests and responsibilities in:

the climatology and meteorology of built-up areas,
exchange processes between the urban “surface” and the overlying boundary layer,
urban air quality,
wind and turbulence in the city,
measurement, modeling and remote sensing of urban atmospheric and surface characteristics at all scales,
micro-scale processes and patterns associated with urban landscape elements (buildings, canyons, parks, roads etc),
building climatology,
biometeorology and bioclimatology within urban ecosystems, including human comfort and hazards,
the inclusion of urban atmospheric processes into design and planning and the modelling of weather, and
the representation of urban landscapes in models of climate at meso-scales.