Assessing the Performance of a Vulnerability Index during Oppressive Heat across Georgia, United States

Extreme heat is the leading weather-related killer in the United States. Vulnerability to extreme heat has previously been identified and mapped in urban areas to improve heat morbidity and mortality prevention efforts.However,onlylimitedworkhasexaminedvulnerabilityoutsideofurbanlocations. Thisstudyseeksto broaden the geographic context of earlier work and compute heat vulnerability across the state of Georgia, which offers diverse landscapes and populations with varying sociodemographic characteristics. Here, a modified heat vulnerability index (HVI) developed by Reid et al. is used to characterize vulnerability by county. About half of counties with the greatest heat vulnerability index scores contain the larger cities in the state (i.e., Athens, Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, Macon, and Savannah), while the other half of highvulnerability counties are located in more rural counties clustered in southwestern and east-central Georgia. Thesourceofvulnerabilityvariedbetweenthemoreurbanandruralhigh-vulnerabilitycounties,withpoverty and population of nonwhite residents driving vulnerability in the more urban counties and social isolation/ populationofelderly/poor healththedominantfactorinthemoreruralcounties.Additionally,theeffectiveness ofthe HVIinidentifyingvulnerablepopulations was investigated byexaminingtheeffectofmodificationofthe vulnerability index score with mortality during extreme heat. Except for the least vulnerable categories, the relative risk of mortality increases with increasing vulnerability. For the highest-vulnerability counties, oppressively hot days lead to a 7.7% increase in mortality.

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