Group 10 Project

Impact of excessive heat

Economic Impact: Heat impacts several industries that directly or indirectly affects the economy. In agriculture,High temperatures negatively impact crop yields, reducing exports and increasing inflation. This scenario can further strain the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Heat-related problems in construction affect labor efficiency and project timelines, escalating costs, And lastly, Increased power demand during heatwaves leads to higher coal consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, exacerbating climate change and creating a vicious cycle.

Medical Impact: Temperature-sensitive medical equipment and vaccines face the risk of damage or loss during heatwaves, leading to economic setbacks in the healthcare sector. Rising temperatures affect rainfall patterns, leading to more frequent floods, especially in coastal cities like Mumbai. Flooding results in the dislocation of populations and increases mortality rates. The combination of frequent disease outbreaks and heat stress weakens the immune system, increasing susceptibility to diseases and healthcare costs. Heatstroke is a direct consequence of extreme heat. Its likelihood increases with increase in temperature. They can be considered a silent killer as they give rise to many other life threatening ailments such as heart attack, which may then instead be considered as the cause of death sometimes.

Solutions to Excessive Heat

Infrastructure Upgrades: avoid large amounts of glass (like office buildings) as this both traps heat in and reflects the sunlight onto streets, thereby increasing temperature overall. Use RCC over cement or steel supports, which helps with heat dissipation.Modern cooling strategies include both passive and active methods. Taking advantage of Mumbai’s sea breeze by positioning windows to align with prevailing winds can enhance cooling, especially near the Arabian Sea. Painting buildings white or using radiative cooling paint can also help. Radiative cooling paints, such as those developed by JNCASR, reflect more sunlight and cool surfaces by up to 10 degrees Celsius. Additionally, increasing green cover on rooftops and walls can provide shade and improve air quality. Expanding tree cover on main roads and using concrete instead of asphalt can further reduce temperatures.

Use of Trees: Trees help is us in 2 main ways, the more conventional method is soaking up greenhouse gas emissions, as well as direct cooling effect whose effect is directly related to the amount of density of trees. Plants provide direct cooling in two major ways. Plants are effective at providing shade due to the presence of the huge surface area of leaves that are filled with chlorophyll designed to absorb light and use it for photosynthesis. Trees also provide tremendous amounts of cooling with the help transpiration, that is the evaporation of water. This happens through microscopic holes called stomata. Since evaporation of water is an endothermic process, it absorbs a lot of heat from the surroundings. An individual tree can transpire hundreds of liters of water per day. For every 100 liters of water transpired, the tree then cools by 70 kWh, which is, comparable to a large air conditioning unit running for upto 12 hours.

Public Transport: Adding more buses and trains to reduce overcrowding, implementing better scheduling systems and real-time tracking to ensure timely services, investing in better roads, stations, and maintenance facilities, installing CCTV cameras, deploying security personnel, and promoting safety awareness, ensuring that all vehicles and stations are accessible to people with disabilities, using data analytics to plan more efficient routes and reduce travel times, regular cleaning and maintenance of vehicles and stations and extending services to underserved areas is some of the few things BEST could do to improve bus transport. New modes of transport can also be used alongside busses such as metro rails that can not only cut down on overcrowding in local trains but also cut down on highway traffic as a cheap and comfortable alternative to cars