Heat Watch Albania

Albania faces some of the most extremes threats of rising annual temperatures across Europe. With the compounding pace of urbanization, Albanian cities will see severe challenges for the management of public health, energy infrastructure and economic productivity. With concerns of maintaining livelihoods, local residents experience worsening levels of exposure to climate-induced threats. Yet many Albanian cities still have limited evidence of the distributional and disproportionate effects of these hazards at the local level, hindering mitigation and adaptation efforts.

In response to these growing challenges, a group of local climate researchers and community volunteers recently engaged in a multi-day field campaign across the cities of Shkodra, Tirana and Vlora to better identify the exact locations facing greater exposure to extreme heat and degraded air quality. Using a well-established participatory mapping process, "Heat Watch", the team generated tens of thousands of air measurements in a single day, helping to achieve two main objectives:

1. Develop high-resolution descriptions of the distribution of air temperature, heat index, and air quality across each of Shkodra, Tirana and Vlora;
2. Engage local communities to foster relationships and build heat awareness amongst researchers, public officials and residents.

Results gathered by volunteers indeed indicate differences in air temperature, as wide as 6°C across cities at the same time, confirming a significant level of disparity in heat exposure and risk to health effects. Examining the built environment, hotter measurements were found to correspond with greater amounts of impervious surfaces and lesser amounts of tree canopy in surrounding areas. Compounding the impacts of heat on health, concentrations of particulate matter (PM _2.5 ) were also measured to vary widely by location, with a median area level considered at least moderately unhealthy to sensitive populations. 

Combining the heat measurements with satellite-derived landscape descriptions through a machine-learning process, we generated high-resolution models of temperature and heat index across each city throughout the morning, afternoon and evening, as well as an average model of daytime distribution. These new heat descriptions improve on otherwise coarse surface temperature descriptions derived from satellites, which can tend to overestimate air temperatures and offer little access for use by local communities.

Lastly, as a complement to the air measurements, volunteers also conducted a photo-mapping exercise at various heat-relevant "places of interest" across each city. The resulting anecdotes and thermal photographs from Heat Watch volunteers help to describe personal experiences in specific locations and generate community-based ideas for cooling solutions.

These new datasets provide robust sets of information for a variety of purposes towards strengthening heat resilience in Albanian cities. By engaging community members in this data collection campaign we aimed to advance the role Albania residents play in directing effective solutions to climate change and bring a degree of "civic legitimacy" to the data products. Using this new evidence base and hazard description, planners and researchers can leverage the investigations of community members to better understand the issue of urban heat and advance equitable heat solutions in Albania.

In this Story Map, we share how volunteers generated the datasets, tour a sample of the resulting maps, and overview a set of possibilities for applying these data towards heat mitigation and adaptation actions.

Heat Watch Albania was conducted as a partnership between CAPA Strategies, Edona Bylykbashi at the University of New York in Tirana, and The World Bank.

On the morning of each mapping day, volunteers arose early to be in position for their morning data collection route, from 6:00am to 7:00am. Volunteers mounted their Heat Watch and AirBeam sensors to the windows of their vehicles, started their navigation software, and turn-by-turn gathered ambient measurements through residential neighborhoods, parks, industrial districts, rural areas, and the like.

As they drove, their sensors sampled the temperature, humidity and particulate matter of each area at a rate of one measurement per second, resulting in thousands of measurements per traverse. They repeated the same traverse paths at afternoon (15:00 to 16:00) and evening (19:00 to 20:00) in each city. Between traverses, they visited several "places of interest" with FLIR thermal cameras to visually investigate surface temperatures and record observations of the built environment and human behaviors. Paired in teams, volunteers recorded their experiences throughout the campaign with photo and video imagery, such as the social media reel featured here to the right.

The single day for data collection in each city ("campaign day") was selected for representing typical conditions that produce urban heat island effects: high temperatures, low cloud cover, low wind, and no precipitation. In the results we expect to see structures such as buildings, roads, and other infrastructure absorbing and re-emitting the sun’s heat more than natural features such as forests and water bodies. The method of collecting many in-situ ambient measurements simultaneously across a study region provides a detailed description of how ambient heat varies across urban landscapes.

The following section presents maps featuring four sets of field data products generated for Shkodra, Tirana and Vlora. One city is used as an example for each product, with links provided to the other two cities. Products include:

(1) Temperatures measured along the data collection traverses ("Heat Data"); (2) Temperature models and comparisons with land-cover ("Heat Models"); (3) Thermal imagery photographs and survey responses ("Photo-Maps"). (4) Particulate matter measured along the data collection traverses ("PM _2.5  Data");

Following successful campaign days in all three cities, CAPA retrieved and processed the collected data into traverse point datasets and maps. The below summary statistics table briefly describes results from Shkodra, Tirana and Vlora alongside several key geographic attributes. Note that "Max Temperature" indicates the maximum temperature measured during any of the three traverse periods and "Max Difference" describes the widest simultaneous range of temperatures across the three time periods.

Across the three cities, several patterns can be observed from these statistics.

• Maximum ranges in temperature occurred either in the morning or evening, and never the afternoon, indicating that disparities may be more present in the night-time than day-time.
• Despite featuring a much narrower range in elevation, Shkodra exhibited a similar maximum range in temperature as Tirana.
• Although the same size, Vlora and Shkodra displayed different ranges in temperature.

We will next examine how these patterns display spatially in maps.

Full sets of the results are available at the following links:

Heat Watch Vlora Web-Map -  link  Heat Watch Shkodra Web-Map -  link  Heat Watch Tirana Web-Map -  link  

Note that each web-map also features relative humidity measurements and heat index models. Heat index is a calculation of how hot it feels when humidity is factored in with temperature. On the particular days of mapping in all three cities, relative humidity levels measured too low to elevate heat index above temperature. However, historical data in these areas do indicate that relative humidity can occasionally be high enough on hot days to raise heat index and intensify the effect of heat on the human body. Heat Watch data may be helpful in understanding the relative distribution of humidity across these cities under more humid and hot conditions.

After processing the traverse points, we integrated high resolution remotely-sensed data from the Sentinel-2 satellite and correlated patterns of measured temperature with surrounding land cover in a machine-learning process. The resulting outputs are temperature models (10-meter resolution) that span each study area at morning, afternoon and evening, as well as an average map.

As explored in the previous maps, we can track patterns between concentrations of heat and existing land cover variables like canopy cover and impervious surface presence as well as population density. Looking at each variable side-by-side with the heat data, we can visualize these relationships at varying scales across each city. The patterns that emerge reveal important considerations as these cities grow and change.

To further capture the experience of heat in Albanian cities, volunteers also conducted a photo-mapping activity at various locations throughout the campaign day. Using thermal imagery cameras attached to their smartphones, volunteers visually investigated surface temperatures and noted physical and social qualities of the surrounding environment. They then recorded their observations at each site and responded to a series of prompts through the platform Survey123. With these data CAPA generated a web-map featuring the responses below.

The final of the four products generated in Heat Watch Albania are mobile measurements of particulate matter, which were gathered simultaneously and along the same routes as the temperature measurements. Particulate matter measurements can serve as proxy indicator for overall air quality index, and the snapshot in time provided here can offer new insight into areas of Albanian cities that may experience elevated levels of air pollution.

Particulate matter (PM) are tiny air particles that can be made of many different chemicals and are often produced through combustion processes of automobiles, construction equipment, agricultural processes, industrial plants, and wildfires. PM particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, known as PM _2.5 , can be especially harmful to human health when breathed in elevated concentrations. The following table presents the estimated health impacts of increasing levels of PM _2.5  concentrations.

Below we present the median and maximum measurement of PM _2.5  for each traverse period by city. The median statistic is used as it is less influenced by extreme values (>250 µg/m3) than the mean statistic. These extreme values, which may be related to roadway traffic and unique vehicle emissions, are not excluded from the datasets and maps that follow, as they are considered accurate measurements and reflect real conditions observed along the traverses.

Several patterns amongst all three cities are apparent:

• The highest median measurement occurs in the morning, at levels considered as "moderate" air quality level, meaning sensitive individuals may experience respiratory symptoms outside.
• The lowest median measurement occurs in the afternoon.
• Maximum measurements reach "Unhealthy", "Very Unhealthy", or "Hazardous" air quality levels during all traverses.

The following maps display PM _2.5  concentration measurements at the three time periods in each city. Also collected and available as point attributes are measurements of PM ₁  and PM ₁₀ .

The results of Heat Watch Albania provide new insights into the increasing risk extreme heat poses in Shkodra, Tirana and Vlora, Albania through descriptions of ambient heat and relationships with the built environment, human experience, and the intersecting hazard of air pollution. As snapshots-in-time, they describe present conditions of heat in these cities and serve as a basis of evidence for taking action on heat.

The primary takeaway from these activities is that on a given hot day, heat is not evenly distributed within each of these Albanian cities: in Shkodra, a temperature differential of 6.5°C was measured (evening); Tirana 4.3°C (morning), and Vlora, 6.4°C (morning). Depending on where people live, work, travel and recreate in these cities, they may experience disparate levels of exposure to heat, and face higher risk of heat-related health conditions.

Together these distributional descriptions identify areas and locations across Shkodra, Tirana and Vlora that are experiencing disparate levels of urban heat. Broad physical interventions like increasing shade cover and decreasing the amount of heat-retaining materials like concrete and asphalt are likely to mitigate the effects of urban heat. Integrating the results with social vulnerability information will help to identify the populations most in need of awareness building and social safety net solutions.

As the work on heat progresses in Albania, collaborative efforts such as Heat Watch that involve community, local researchers, and supporting partners will be essential for effectively managing risk and enhancing resilience to climate change.

The insights gathered through Heat Watch Albania would not have been possible without the local volunteers & researchers, specifically Edona Bylykbashi at the University of New York in Tirana -- thank you to all for your time and energy.

This activity was made possible with the financial support from the Japan-Bank Program for Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Management in Developing Countries, which is financed by the Government of Japan and administered by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery.

To provide broad access to the results, the summary report and datasets are available  here .