Research data sources for heat index

[BethMattern]

Proximity to extreme heat or increasing heat indexes is a risk to public health. The inclusion of a heat index indicator might be useful in identifying prioritized communities. We need to find a reliable source for this data and determine if it can be ingested into the tool in a useful way.

Items to consider are:

• granularity - can the data be mapped back to census block groups in a meaningful/reliable way?
• is the data inclusive of the entire US and its territories? Which states/territories are included/excluded?
• recency - when was the data last updated? how often is it updated?
• format - how do we access the data?

possible sources - usgs.gov; https://nihhis.cpo.noaa.gov/vulnerability-mapping

Definition of Done:

• Identify source(s) and provide information about each (see items to consider above)
• Provide a recommendation on how to apply data to census block groups

[switzersc-usds]

Other things to consider:

• tree canopy
• impervious surfaces

These are available in the National Land Cover Data.

[switzersc-usds]

Also see this article: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021EF002016

[rohitmusti]

a heads up that the tree equity score dataset that we have already loaded into the ETL pipeline has average surface temperature for census block groups and it has tree canopy for large parts of the country

[rohitmusti]

here is a link to a jupyter notebook containing the code we wrote to process landsat tiles to derive surface temperature! It relies on open source libraries and an open dataset! You can use the already processed results in the avg_temp field on the tree equity score data download.

[rohitmusti]

we've also got code that takes NCLD data and calculates tree canopy data if you would like me to share that as well!

[KristineNixon]

Attached is a document with a number of data sources for consideration to use for the Heat Index.
Data Sources for Heat Index #552.docx