More than half of the population of Andalucia lives in an area classified as high or very high priority for risk of extreme heat, according to recent research conducted by the universities of Granada, Almería, and Málaga and published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. The study was based on identifying residential areas where three critical factors converge: greater exposure to high temperatures, high social vulnerability of the population, and poor pedestrian access to potential climate shelters.
The results show significant areas of concern. Some of the neighbourhoods with the greatest social vulnerability and greatest exposure to heat are also those that have the worst access to thermal relief spaces such as parks, wooded areas or public facilities with air conditioning.
Detailed analysis confirms that these are typically not the centres of cities, but rather certain peripheral residential areas and neighbourhoods historically neglected by urban planning policies, and where the most vulnerable populations bear a greater burden of heat risk with fewer nearby resources to mitigate it.
Read the article (in Spanish) in GranadaHoy here.