SCOUTS

Due to the rapid growth of buildings, depletion of green cover, and climate change, extreme heat events are posing an increasing threat to many urban communities around the world. To date, urban heat vulnerability research has mostly focused on generating coarse-grained heat maps of cities using satellite images with low spatio-temporal resolutions to quantify the heat hazard. While some recent works propose incorporating data from nearby static weather stations, they fail to reflect the spatial variations of air temperature in urban areas due to the limited availability of weather stations. In this paper, we present our vision for a multi-layer approach to tracking the actual heat experienced by individuals and communities with very high spatio-temporal resolution. The proposed framework, Smart Community-centric Urban Thermal Sensing (SCOUTS), seamlessly support a variety of human, and vehicle-borne sensors in conjunction with satellite and weather station data to accurately map the heat hazards of urban regions and communities.