Mapping Heatwaves: Community Knowledge, Inequality and Mathematical Models

• Date: Expected early November 2026
• Location: TBD

Summary

As heatwaves become more frequent and severe, there is growing recognition that exposure to extreme heat, and the capacity to adapt to it, are unevenly distributed across communities. Current approaches to heat-risk mapping typically combine environmental, demographic and socio-economic indicators, but often rely on aggregated datasets and simplified representations of communities that can overlook important local contexts and sources of resilience. This workshop will bring together researchers from mathematical sciences, social sciences, engineering, health and policy to explore how community knowledge can complement and enrich existing approaches to modelling heatwave risk and resilience. Central to the workshop will be an interactive data hack using datasets that map environmental pressures, inequalities and policy responses. Participants will examine how heat exposure, risk and resilience are represented within these datasets and identify dimensions of adaptation and resilience that may be absent, obscured or difficult to capture through conventional indicators. Alongside these datasets, we will consider examples of community-derived knowledge and locally situated evidence, including insights from community engagement activities in Bath and information relating to factors such as tree canopy cover, green space, cooling spaces, housing characteristics and neighbourhood features that influence thermal comfort. Working in interdisciplinary teams, we will explore how environmental, population and community-based evidence might be combined to improve representations of heatwave risk and resilience. Particular attention will be given to mathematical and computational challenges associated with data integration, uncertainty, scale and representation. The workshop will generate a small number of prototype research ideas and collaborations including an initial framework for incorporating community knowledge into future approaches to heat-risk mapping and adaptation planning.

Organisers and contact

Leda Blackwood (Psychology), Julie Barnett (Psychology) and Theresa Smith (Mathematical Sciences)

Contact: TBD

External event page

TBD