Mapping adaptive capacity to extreme heat. A graphical approach

Urban vulnerability studies currently lack of a climate-oriented approach. The most widespread vulnerability indexes focus on social and economic variables, and usually do not take into account urban features that may hint at thermal conditions of citizens during extreme heat events. The development of new tools to map adaptive capacity of citizens to extreme heat can contribute to the definition of new resiliency strategies, and broaden the scope of existing vulnerability studies. To this end, this work introduces a graphical approach to visualize the combination of three building characteristics that influence indoor thermal conditions of citizens: the compactness of the urban fabric surrounding housing buildings, the cross-ventilation potential of housing buildings and the presence of thermal insulation in their envelope. The application of the graphical approach to the city of Barcelona demonstrates its effectiveness in representing the different conditions in which citizens face extreme heat, both at the building scale and the neighbourhood scale. This scalable tool, based on the use of open public datasets, can help city administrators to identify criticalities and disparities and develop new adaptation strategies in the face of climate change.