Possible Hazards to Human Health Caused by Changing in Urban Climate

The waste greenhouse gases coming from the use of energy for HVAC plants, transport network and other antropic activities in urban areas cause a deep impact on the local atmospheric conditions, as the urban heat island (UHI), heat waves and so on. The alteration of climate condition (temperature, humidity, etc.) makes the urban environment out of the homeostatic plateaux of human species. The main bioclimatic indexes may be used in urban climate studies to describe the level of thermal sensation that people feels because of climatic conditions. These indexes provide a meaningful and realistic indicator to readily discover possible physiological and psychological damages that people could suffer for the effects of altered bioclimatic conditions. To the aim to prevent harmful health effects of heat-waves, the authors have developed a model to predict the weather for the next day thanks to an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technique. In this way the researchers have used the forecasted meteorological data to calculate the bioclimatic indexes. The values of the bioclimatic indexes calculated using the forecasted meteorological data by ANN have been validated by comparing with the bioclimatic indexes values calculated using the data (temperature, relative humidity and wind velocity) recorded, in the same interval of time, from the meteorological stations. The authors have obtained very encouraging results and have found out that the proposed methodology have high level of accuracy. Consequently the proposed methodology could constitute an useful tools usable as heat health alert system to activate social and health care networks, as like as provisions of practical advice to the population of the urban areas, and on the health risks related to forecasted heat waves.