Why a sweltering Bengaluru needs more than reactive measures to address heat-stress
Researchers from ATREE are trying to understand how heat interacts with multiple aspects of people’s lives, and are collating information that would help people respond to the risks
On April 2, Bengaluru experienced the hottest day in April in the past three years, with the mercury levels touching 37.2 degrees Celsius. According to experts and weather forecasters, the city needs to brace itself for more, as there seems to be no respite from the sweltering heat any time soon.
Heat stress has been making significant impacts on individuals and communities of the city, threatening the livelihoods of the already vulnerable sections and upending various systems such as water supply, health, energy and more.
Given a relatively newer problem to Bengaluru, which was once known for its pleasant weather conditions throughout the year, the city’s capacity to address heatrelated challenges is almost nonexistent, and the measures by the decisionmakers often reactive.
A team of researchers from Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE) has been working on a project to understand the interactions of heat with different elements at a ward level and to bring together different types of information that would help to respond to the risks of heatstress.
Mapping heat stress
“We wanted to communicate and discuss how heat, as a climate hazard, is connected to several different systems at the ward level and affects the stakeholders who live or work in the ward,” says Dr. Manan Bhan, Fellow in Residence at ATREE.
The project titled ‘Understanding Systemic Impacts of Heat Stress in Bengaluru’ which commenced in Marappanapalya ward
Clay water pots kept for sale in Bengaluru.
in North Bengaluru last year is being led by Bhan and Ujjvala Krishna, associate researcher at ATREE. It is funded by Bangalore Sustainability Forum.
“We wanted to focus on the ward level because that’s where the impacts are often the most immediate. We felt it would be a useful way to bind our work spatially,” says Bhan.
“This particular ward is also fairly unique as it has an industrial area, an APMC yard, runofthemill commercial areas, lowincome settlements, middle class apartment complexes and so on.”
The team first used satellite data to map the green cover and found that areas with less green cover coincided with areas with highest temperature anomalies.
Then, the team identified the big systems such as health, water, energy, waste and mobility that impact lives and livelihoods in the ward, and the various stakeholders.
Gaps in adaptation strategies
“We tried to connect these two things to come up with a ‘vulnerability matrix’ to identify the people who might be most affected in this ward,” explains Bhan.
In a heat perception survey that followed the team spoke to about 40 people who work or live in the ward to understand how they perceive heat stress and respond to it.
Heat stress being a relatively new problem to the city, there seems to be gaps in the way the problem is perceived by the authorities whose strategies are often marked by a lack of understanding of ground realities.
While Bhan points out that even within a particular neighbourhood incidents of heat are not uniform and the impact of heat not unidimensional, these differences often escape the adaptation strategies devised by the decision makers.
The heat advisories issued by several states and cities are often reactive in nature and often put the onus on individuals to take action, says Bhan.
Ujjvala Krishna further explains. “Many people still work in a system that’s not used to changing for a particular individual. Last year during the summer, the Pourakarmika union asked to change their timing from 6 am2 pm to 6 am11 am, but it was denied. Through our work, we’ve been able to understand that it was denied because the rest of the system can’t adapt to it.”
Cascading effect
“Similarly, whether a security guard can change their work timings would depend on whether their workplace – a factory or an office – would change its timings, which is then dependent on the people who live or work there changing their timings. So, it becomes a cascading effect. It has to change across all systems and sectors. It can’t change in isolation, and that’s the biggest thing we realized.”
Krishna notes that there also is a challenge with the understanding of a heatwave at the ground level which reflects in the responses of authorities to heat in the city.
“The IMD says that temperature should be 4.5 degrees above the average temperature for that time to consider it a heat wave. But in urban areas because of the urban heat island effect, the temperature ends up being 3 or 4 degrees above the normal temperature recorded. But weather stations record from areas that are generally cooler. Also, factors like humidity and realfeel temperature are not accounted for.”
The project aims to eventually bring such findings to the attention of decisionmakers and advocate for the need to look at the problem of heat in a systemic manner.
From climate walk to advocacy
The immediate outcome of the ongoing project has been a climate vulnerability walk.
“We were wondering what the best and most scalable way was to communicate our findings to people, something which could be replicated for other hazards or in other wards of the city. So, we came up with this idea of a climate vulnerability walk,” says Bhan.
“It lasts for about 1.5 hours and we stop at 78 checkpoints in the ward to talk about specific things, specific systems and their relationship to heat. For example, we stop at the yard and talk about the relationship between heat, agriculture and the food system.”
The participants are encouraged to map out what they perceive as vulnerabilities, boundaries and stakeholders, and this is followed by a discussion.
Forms of engagement
The team which is planning to conduct the walk every couple of months is also considering other forms of engagements such as games, collaborations, and building climate education tool kits for children and youngsters from lower income settlements.
“Those would be immediate goals. And then we will try to figure out ways to pursue advocacy, and to understand what it takes to move the needle.”