Back to Data and Methods
General population heat risk index
Overview
This layer shows the general population heat risk index and can help answer the question: Where are there many people living in areas with high heat hazard and low levels of existing heat-resilient infrastructure?
The index assigns equal weight to three components: hazard, exposure, and adaptive capacity. Hazard is assessed as land surface temperature. Exposure is assessed as residential population density. Adaptive capacity is assessed as tree cover, vegetation cover and surface reflectivity.
Function
To help answer the question: Where are there many people living in areas with high heat hazard and low levels of existing heat-resilient infrastructure?
Source
WRI
Data sources
Landsat, WorldPop, Sentinel-2, WRI/Meta global tree canopy
Spatial resolution
100 meter
Spatial coverage
Selection of global cities
Temporal resolution
Static
Temporal coverage
Approximately 2020-2025
Cautions
This index uses land surface temperature which, while widely available, is a poor proxy for the heat hazard experienced by people. If available for the full area of interest at sufficient resolution, consider using a heat hazard metric more directly correlated with human health, such as air temperature or universal thermal climate index.