EVALUATION OF VULNERABILITY TO HEAT DISORDERS IN URBAN AREAS USING EMERGENCY TRANSPORTATION RECORD OF HEAT STROKE AND URBAN FUNCTION AGGREGATION INDEX - CASE STUDY ON SAKAI CITY, KOBE CITY AND KYOTO CITY -

Abstract

 The IPCC in its fifth assessment report on climate change has forecast that global warming will have a major impact on health conditions. Especially, growing proportions of older people are increasingly exposed to risks which are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The rise in temperature due to global warming is increasing the number of heat stroke patients transported to hospitals. The purpose of this study is to visualize urban vulnerability to heat disorders. In this study, we define the urban function aggregation(UFA) index consisting of population density, facility density, and accessibility to urban facilities. We performed a correlation analysis between the UFA index and the number of heat stroke transported in the neighborhood, and then it is clarified the classification of neighborhood characteristics by cluster analysis based on the UFA index for Sakai City, Kobe City, and Kyoto City. As a result, the UFA index are strongly correlated with the number of heat stroke transported and then shown that it is an effective index to express the vulnerability of a neighborhood to heat disorders.