Chapter 6
Heat Vulnerability Index Development
and Application in Medan City, Indonesia
Martiwi Diah Setiawati, Marcin Pawel Jarzebski, and Kensuke Fukushi
Abstract In Medan City, the Indonesian largest urban area in Sumatra Island, the
extreme temperature events in the past 30 years have become more frequent. This
phenomenon causes potential health thread to rapidly growing urban population.
Moreover, the situation is likely to become more severe in the future under urban
sprawl and climate change. Accordingly, it is imperative to understand the vulnerability of the city to extreme temperature with robust indices and spatial visualization
in order to provide a baseline for planning responses to such risk. Thus, this research
aims to assess heat vulnerability in Medan City, by developing and applying Heat
Vulnerability Index (HVI) based on the commonly used health indicators and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Spatial visualization of the HVI analysis demonstrated a higher vulnerability within the downtown areas of Medan City, compared
with suburbs where the density of built-up areas contributes as the highest factor
loading for the index. The positive effect of urban green area also can be shown by
the assessment of PCA where the sign of factor loading was negative. Furthermore,
our assessment also indicates that the HVI has positive correlation with number of
hypertension patient and respiratory disease patient as 0.71 and 0.46, respectively.
Though the impacts of heat stress are alarming, the integration of heat-related risk
map into the master plan for spatial planning of Medan City have not been taken
into consideration. This information will be very useful for local authorities when
deciding on targeted campaign of urban climate adaptation, for example, increasing
open green space by private sector including green roof top initiative. In addition, one
of the HVI components (i.e., Universal Thermal Climate Index) also could assist the
heat warning system in the future. However, some limitations existed in this study
such as the analysis was at sub-district level instead of finer spatial resolution and the
ideal study should include more heat-related illnesses but these data are not currently
available in the study area.
Keywords Heat vulnerability index · Medan · Urban climate · Environmental
health
M. D. Setiawati (B) · M. P. Jarzebski · K. Fukushi
Institutes for Future Initiatives, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
e-mail: martiwi1802@gmail.com; martiwi1802@ifi.u-tokyo.ac.jp
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
R. Djalante et al. (eds.), Integrated Research on Disaster Risks, Disaster Risk Reduction,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55563-4_6
87
Heat Vulnerability Index Development
and Application in Medan City, Indonesia
Martiwi Diah Setiawati, Marcin Pawel Jarzebski, and Kensuke Fukushi
Abstract In Medan City, the Indonesian largest urban area in Sumatra Island, the
extreme temperature events in the past 30 years have become more frequent. This
phenomenon causes potential health thread to rapidly growing urban population.
Moreover, the situation is likely to become more severe in the future under urban
sprawl and climate change. Accordingly, it is imperative to understand the vulnerability of the city to extreme temperature with robust indices and spatial visualization
in order to provide a baseline for planning responses to such risk. Thus, this research
aims to assess heat vulnerability in Medan City, by developing and applying Heat
Vulnerability Index (HVI) based on the commonly used health indicators and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Spatial visualization of the HVI analysis demonstrated a higher vulnerability within the downtown areas of Medan City, compared
with suburbs where the density of built-up areas contributes as the highest factor
loading for the index. The positive effect of urban green area also can be shown by
the assessment of PCA where the sign of factor loading was negative. Furthermore,
our assessment also indicates that the HVI has positive correlation with number of
hypertension patient and respiratory disease patient as 0.71 and 0.46, respectively.
Though the impacts of heat stress are alarming, the integration of heat-related risk
map into the master plan for spatial planning of Medan City have not been taken
into consideration. This information will be very useful for local authorities when
deciding on targeted campaign of urban climate adaptation, for example, increasing
open green space by private sector including green roof top initiative. In addition, one
of the HVI components (i.e., Universal Thermal Climate Index) also could assist the
heat warning system in the future. However, some limitations existed in this study
such as the analysis was at sub-district level instead of finer spatial resolution and the
ideal study should include more heat-related illnesses but these data are not currently
available in the study area.
Keywords Heat vulnerability index · Medan · Urban climate · Environmental
health
M. D. Setiawati (B) · M. P. Jarzebski · K. Fukushi
Institutes for Future Initiatives, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
e-mail: martiwi1802@gmail.com; martiwi1802@ifi.u-tokyo.ac.jp
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
R. Djalante et al. (eds.), Integrated Research on Disaster Risks, Disaster Risk Reduction,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55563-4_6
87