Abstract:
Health Warning Systems (HWS) are setup in place by governments to help the masses in protecting themselves form contrary paraphernalia of heat waves all over the world. This study proposes a Heat Wave Early Response System on a Union Council (UC) level for Karachi, Pakistan. It is built on strategic deployment of a real-time sensor network. The network comprises of nodes. A sensor node consists of a temperature and humidity sensor, an atmospheric pressure sensor and a radio unit, for wireless transmission of data. Data thus recorded, is transmitted on hourly basis to a database operating on a local server. This database serves as the data hub for the online monitoring system. The UC supervisor is privileged to send light and heavy warnings in case a heatwave is expected. This network is based on site suitability incorporating LST (Land Surface Temperature), air temperature and land cover derived from Landsat Satellite Missions 8 OLI, 7 ETM+ and 4-5 TM using remote sensing techniques.
