New Delhi: Ahmedabad in India is the second most in-risk city in the world from extreme heat conditions, after Iraq’s city of Al Basrah, according to an analysis that has ranked 205 of the world’s largest cities.
India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Ghana together host the largest number of cities at risk of extreme heat, with major tourist destinations including Jaipur and international business hubs in the top 50, the study published in the journal Sustainable Cities and Society says, identifying places where people are most in danger as the planet continues to warm.
More than 95 per cent of the most at-risk cities are in South and Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the study.
Fourteen Indian cities that featured in the top 50 at-risk locations included Nagpur and Pune in Maharashtra, Madurai and Chennai in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka’s Bengaluru and Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur and Lucknow.
Lead author, Nethmi Jayaratne Kariyawasam, a researcher at the UK’s Oxford University, said, “It isn’t just exposure to hot temperatures that matters for risk. Our study highlights the importance of multi-faceted global heat risk assessments, which reveal the diverse pathways through which urban heat risk emerges.”
“In many major cities, particularly across Asia and Africa, extreme heat coincides with high vulnerability and limited coping capacity. This combination can substantially increase heat risk and, in some cases, have life-threatening consequences,” Kariyawasam said.
The study analysed cities with a population of over one million. Factors considered include demographic and socioeconomic conditions that increase susceptibility to heat-related illness and mortality, such as age and financial means, as well as access to cooling infrastructure such as air conditioning, and ecological buffers such as tree cover.
“India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Ghana host the largest number of cities,” the authors wrote.
“Major tourist destinations and international business hubs, including Cairo (Egypt), Bangkok (Thailand), Hanoi (Vietnam) and Jaipur (India) are also ranked in the top 50,” they said.
The analytical framework enables a direct comparison of cities both where risk is highest and the processes through which it arises, the researchers said.
Hazard exposure alone is not predictive of overall risk, they said, as highly exposed cities such as Bangkok and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia ranked lower due to a strong coping capacity.
Vulnerability and coping deficits also substantially amplified risk from extreme heat, because of which cities with a moderate exposure can still rank among the highest at-risk where socio-economic and infrastructural constraints coincide, as seen in Karachi and Faisalabad in Pakistan and Kaduna, Nigeria.
Author Radhika Khosla, associate professor at the University of Oxford, who co-supervised the research, said, “Air conditioning demand is increasing worldwide, but many cannot afford it. And if we over-rely on this energy-intensive form of cooling, we risk further global warming in a vicious cycle.”
“In order to scale adaptation and thermal comfort for all, we must consider a nuanced approach to keeping people safe, sequencing solutions with passive cooling and low-energy technologies such as fans and coolers being the first step,” Khosla said.
The authors wrote, “Overall, this approach offers a scalable foundation for comparative heat risk assessment in cities.”
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