Objectives. We compared the ability of several heat-health warning systems in order to predict heat-associated mortality from common data sets.Methods. Heat-health warning systems initiate emergency public health interventions in response to forecasts of adverse weather conditions by setting trigger values for temperature and sometimes other weather conditions to predict unacceptable levels of adverse health effects. We examined 4 commonly used trigger-setting approaches: (1) synoptic classification, (2) epidemiologic assessment of the temperature-mortality relationship, (3) temperature-humidity index, and (4) physiologic classification. We applied each approach in Chicago, Illinois; London, United Kingdom; Madrid, Spain; and Montreal, Canada, to identify days expected to be associated with the highest heat-related mortality.Results. We found little agreement across the approaches in which days were identified as most dangerous. In general, days identified by temperature-mortality assessment were associated with the highest excess mortality.Conclusions. Triggering of alert days and ultimately the initiation of emergency responses by a heat-health warning system varies significantly across approaches adopted to establish triggers.
Language: en
LA - en SN - 0090-0036 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2009.169748 ID - ref1 ER -