Biometeorological Climate impact Assessment System (BioCAS) was developed by combining models on building-scale climate analysis, biometeorology, and excess mortality by heat stress. It can provide urban planners with gridded data relevant for local climate assessment at 25 m and 5 m spatial resolutions. The influence of building morphology and vegetation on mean radiant temperature Tmrt was simulated by the SOLWEIG model. Gridded hourly perceived temperature PT was computed using the Klima-Michel Model based on the estimated Tmrt. Daily maximum perceived temperature PTmax was then applied to an empirical-statistical model that explains the relationship between PTmax and excess mortality rate rEM in Seoul. The resultant rEM map quantifies the heat stress at the building scale.

Each component model of BioCAS was compared to the observation. For the evaluation of the temperature deviation, observed data from automatic weather stations in Seoul were utilized. For the evaluation of Tmrt from the SOLWEIG model, three dimensional radiations (shortwave and longwave components) in and around urban canyon and tall trees were observed. For the assessment of mortality increase by heat stress, mortality differences among districts in Seoul were compared to the estimated rEM. BioCAS can assess the urban heat stress in terms of mortality changes brought specifically by the placement and volume of buildings. Additional research such as indoor climate assessment, vegetation cooling impact, and local population structure will further improve the system.

Residents in urban areas are now confronting two kinds of warming which are global warming and urban heat island. The former is caused by an increase in concentration of greenhouse effect gases and the latter is caused by urbanization. The air temperature rise effect of urban heat island is not small compared to global warming. The world 11-year average air temperature has increased by 0.90 degrees during the last 100 years. The Japanese 11-year average air temperature has increased by 1.38 degrees. However, the 11-year average air temperature rise of Tokyo during the same period leads to 3.03 degrees.

Such high air temperature rise has posed various environmental problems in the society. Human health is one of the problems. High daytime air temperature considered to lead to heat stroke while high night air temperature can pose sleep problems. However, only health damage due to heat stroke has been remarked and some countermeasures including an alerting service have been installed in Japan. The reason is considered as follows. Damage of heat stroke can be quantified by using public statistics of deaths or the number of patients transported by ambulance. These statistics are made every year by Japanese or local governments. Meanwhile, there is no statistics related to sleep in Japan. Many previous studies have assessed damage on sleep by nighttime air temperature rise. However, their assessed values could not be compared with damage of heat stroke and ignored in the society.

This study aimed at developing damage functions of heat stroke and sleep disturbance at the same measure and estimating the current damages caused by air temperature rise.

We adopted the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) as the measure for heat stroke and sleep disturbance in this study. DALY was developed by World Health Organization (WHO). It is the sum of the years of life lost (YLL) and the years lost due to disability (YLD). YLL is calculated to multiply the number of deaths by the standard life expectancy at age of death in years. YLD is calculated to multiply the number of incident cases by the disability weight and the average duration of the case until remission or death. The numerical values or functions about heat stroke are known by the previous studies or public statistics. Regarding sleep disturbance, we have already developed the disability weight based on interview to experts. Here we quantified the relationship between the number of cases (sleep disturbance) and the nighttime air temperature based on the past epidemiological studies conducted in 2006 and 2007.

Then, we estimated the current health damage about heat stroke and sleep disturbance in Tokyo using the above DALY loss functions and the meteorological data. The society tends to deem heat stroke as the most important damage caused by urban air temperature rise. However, our result showed that the current DALY loss by sleep disturbance in Tokyo is also important and should not be ignored.

This work investigates the inhalation cancer risk caused by air pollution in Krasnoyarsk city, an industrial city in eastern Siberia. For risk assessment we used data from the state’s network of urban air pollution monitoring stations.

The pollutants which give the greatest contribution cancer effect for human health have been selected, such as benzene, formaldehyde, benzo[a]pyrene, ethylbenzene.

Dynamics of these substances concentrations were analysed from 1982 to 2013. It was shown that changes of the concentrations of benzene, benzo[a]pyrene and ethylbenzene connect mainly with changes in emission of the industry and traffic. While the formaldehyde concentrations are defined by the level of air pollution in generally. At the same time formaldehyde concentrations depend on change of urban meteorology. For the last 30 years average air temperature in Krasnoyarsk increased on 1.9°С. Increasing of air temperature leads to growth of intensity of photochemical reactions that increase formaldehyde levels. Photochemical reactions leads to increase of formaldehyde concentration by factor of ten during the summer. The contribution of various factors to air pollution levels was estimated.

For each substances a time of toxic effect exposure was calculated. It was used the logarithmic model for this calculation. It was shown that time exposure for formaldehyde and benzene was reduced during 30 years. It is connected with increasing their concentration in urban air.

Cancer risk estimated for various organ targets. Verification of the received results was carried out by comparison with statistics of cancer of specific organ’s targets of the city’s inhabitants.

The impact of weather factors on human health has been greatly realized in recent times; the effects these variables have on malaria prevalence have been of particular interest because the disease is a public health burden and its transmission is sensitive to changing weather and climate as a result of urban development. .This study explored the impact of weather and climate and its variability on the occurrence and transmission of malaria in Ado Ekiti, a tropical rain forest area of south-west Nigeria. We investigate this supposition by looking at the relationship between rainfall, relative humidity, minimum and maximum temperature, and malaria in Ado Ekiti. This study uses monthly data of 8 years (2005-2012) for both meteorological data and record of reported cases of malaria with different age groups.

We evaluated a simple statistical model that permitted valuable and novel insights into the simultaneous/single effects of weather factors (rainfall, relative humidity, maximum and minimum temperature on malaria prevalence. The results from temperature and relative humidity threshold shows significantly that malaria prevails more between the temperature range of (30.1-32)°c and relative humidity of (60.1-80)% than any other temperature and relative humidity threshold. Malaria prevalence among children <5 years old was higher than that of adults.. Also surveys conducted among the people in the station revealed that, the interplay of poverty and other socio-economic variables have intensified the vulnerability of this community to the impacts of this disease. The results improved our understanding of how temperature and humidity shifts affect the distribution of at-risk regions, as well as how rapidly malaria outbreaks take off within vulnerable populations The result of this study will also help individuals, government, policy makers and professionals in guiding against or planning ahead for possible outbreak of malaria.

Keywords: Disease, prevalent, public health, malaria, weather, climate

Due to the urban and town development, it is common to see historical buildings and new buildings intermingled with one and another inside historical regions in Taiwan. With the increase of new buildings, natural ventilation becomes harder, which leads to the impact on the preservation of historical building and the reduction of thermal comfort for residents. Besides, problems of new buildings’ construction and design affect the developments of cities and towns in historical district, which has existed for hundreds of years.

The Wugoushui settlement is located in Pingtung County, the southernmost part of Taiwan, and its hot season of a year is pretty long and belongs to warm and humid tropical climate. In 2008, the Pingtung County Government officially registered and announced Wugoushui as traditional settlement and meanwhile, provided the maintenance and preservation for buildings in this region on government subsidies.

This paper is based on one-year-long field experiments of Wugoushui settlement. Residents in Wugoushui settlement continue constructing new buildings near by the traditional buildings. With the fact that constructions of new buildings results in huge impact on the circumstances of natural ventilation and thermal comfort, which have been for hundreds of years, the simple weather station is set up to collect the data of local microclimate. In addition, four representative traditional architectures were selected to be measured their indoor and outdoor temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction and thermal radiation both in winter (December to February) and in summer (May to September). The measurement time of each building is one week and every data record is kept every minute. Besides, residents were asked to fill out the comfort survey. Based on these data, the distributions of indoor and outdoor thermal environment as well as the thermal comfort of living space under the condition of the natural ventilation are assessed. Finally, focused on the indoor living space of historical districts in southern Taiwan, there are two main suggestions given in the essay: First, a provisional comfort zone in summer is planned and proposed. Second, the preliminary suggestions for the design and norms of new buildings in historical district are provided.

Health effects from climate change are a growing international concern with urban areas at particular risk due to urban heat island effects. The potential burden of disease on vulnerable populations in non-climate controlled settings has not been well-studied. This study compared neonatal morbidity in a non-climate controlled hospital during the 2010 heat wave in Ahmedabad to morbidity in the prior and subsequent years. The outcome was neonatal intensive care unit admissions for heat, as a diagnosis of exclusion. During the months of April, May, and June, 13.0% of all neonatal intensive care unit admissions were for heat versus 4.2% and 2.5% in 2009 and 2011 respectively. A daily maximum temperature increase of two degrees was associated with a heat-related admission odds ratio of 1.59 (95% CI 1.05 – 2.04). Lower floor location of the maternity ward within hospital which occurred after the 2010 heat wave showed a protective effect. These findings demonstrate the importance of simple surveillance measures in motivating a hospital policy change for climate change adaptation – here relocating one ward – and the potential increasing health burden of heat in non-climate controlled institutions on vulnerable populations.