LEAP-HI: Dynamic Sensing and Computational Approaches to Assess Individual-level Heat Risk Across Diverse Populations

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Extreme heat is an invisible and deadly disaster with wide-ranging adverse effects on people’s health and well-being. It is increasing in frequency and severity, and its impacts are felt disproportionately by vulnerable populations. Yet, there is a minimal understanding of how body temperatures are elevated in extreme heat because prolonged human exposure to such conditions is dangerous. This Leading Engineering for America's Prosperity, Health, and Infrastructure (LEAP-HI) project leverages expertise from disparate disciplines to pioneer a field method for measuring human heat exposure with unprecedented detail. The method merges an advanced mobile biometeorological station with a human-shaped thermal manikin. The manikin measures the heat load received by an average human body and mimics the thermoregulatory system’s response. Physical methods will be co-developed with computational manikins to allow a realistic heat exposure assessment across diverse demographics and body shapes. The research will help develop more equitable heat exposure sensing and modeling approaches, thus help to mitigate the health risks of severely hot weather. The manikin will be leveraged to engage the general public and students through multimedia outreach programs and open house events. The integrated research and education activities will emphasize the participation of underrepresented groups in STEM, including female early-career faculty investigators and a transdisciplinary student body that spans undergraduates and graduates from engineering, sustainability, climate, arts, and health sciences. This project will research models and methods of varying complexity that translate built environment thermal measurements or simulations into realistic convective and radiative boundary conditions for three-dimensional computational manikin simulations of diverse demographics. These models will address knowledge gaps surrounding the impact of air turbulence on convection dynamics and the effect of directional and spectral radiation distributions on the radiative flux on various body parts and shapes. Novel thermal manikin field methods and soft composite heat-mode filtering manikin coatings will be developed to validate and benchmark models and manikin simulations in varying environments. The project will also establish new field calibration, data collection, and analysis protocols. A database will be created based on various “heatscapes” and evolving “riskscapes,” calculated from heat load and strain simulations of computational manikins representing the diversity of the U.S. population.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.