Project Description:
As global temperatures increase due to climate change, actions must be taken to maintain citizen’s safety. The District of Columbia has opened public cooling shelters when the temperature is deemed a health risk to those without access to reliable air conditioning. Heat waves can pose a variety of risks to public health such as heat exhaustion, and more severely, heat stroke. This project utilizes demographic data to determine where there are higher densities of “vulnerable” populations in D.C. to determine the optimal locations to place additional cooling shelters. The demographic factors that indicate high vulnerability to heat waves include, the percentage of the tract population that is below poverty, families below poverty, unemployment, lack of health insurance coverage, lack of high school diploma, disabled, elderly, and non-white population. Through the use of U.S. census data from the American Community Survey, an index was created that rated each census tract within D.C. based on its proportion of “vulnerable” population. The top most vulnerable census tracts using the index created were selected as the focus of this project. Using ArcGIS, these tracts were overlaid with the locations of places of worship and recreational centers that could become recreational centers. These potential new cooling shelters within these tracts were evaluated as additional cooling shelters. The final list of allocated shelters was then chosen by evaluating the capacity of buildings, relative distance to nearby shelters, and current social services provided.
