Integrating Thermal Comfort and Heat Health Risk Assessment: Towards Adaptive Strategies for Mitigating Future Heat Wave Impacts

The increasing frequency and intensity of extreme heat events pose significant challenges to urban populations, particularly in rapidly expanding Mediterranean cities. This thesis investigates the spatial dynamics of urban heat–health risks in Algiers by integrating remote sensing, geospatial modeling, and human thermal comfort assessment. The research is structured around three core objectives: (1) coupling the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) with the Heat Health Risk Indicator (HHRI) to identify and monitor heat-health patterns across multiple temporal periods; (2) examining the spatial variability of HHRI across Local Climate Zones (LCZs) and assessing the joint behavior of Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI) intensity and HHRI through clustering analysis; and (3) developing a GIS-based early warning dashboard to support decision-making and public awareness on heat-related risks.
The multi-decadal analysis (2001–2023) revealed a steady increase in thermal stress and heat-health vulnerability, with persistent hotspots concentrated in the central and eastern districts of Algiers. The LCZ-based assessment demonstrated strong associations between urban morphology, surface temperature, and population vulnerability, where open and low-rise built forms exhibited the highest combined risks. The machine learning–based clustering of SUHI and HHRI provided a new typology of composite heat risk zones, improving the understanding of overlapping thermal and social vulnerabilities. Finally, the interactive heat-health risk dashboard, developed in ArcGIS Online at a 100-m spatial resolution, translated complex geospatial data into an accessible decision-support tool for urban planners, researchers, and public health authorities.
By combining remote sensing, thermal comfort indices, and spatial analytics, this thesis contributes a replicable and data-driven framework for assessing and visualizing urban heat-health risks in data-limited contexts. The findings emphasize the importance of morphology-specific adaptation, equitable urban planning, and the integration of real-time geospatial tools into climate-resilient health strategies for Mediterranean and North African cities.