Kristen Brown, an assistant professor in UTSA’s Division of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is the lead researcher on the project.

“Part of the issue in making bigger changes was a lack of data showing exactly what processes might be contributing to potential health effects,” Brown said. “So the goal is if we can get better data, we can identify those processes and have a better case to actually make changes.”

Vecinos del sur de San Antonio buscan respuestas sobre la calidad del aire en sus comunidades

Familias denuncian polvo constante y problemas de salud en vecindarios cercanos a instalaciones industriales.

Extreme heat is becoming more frequent, intense and prolonged as climate change raises temperatures around the world, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Europe is enduring its fifth heatwave of the summer, while large parts of the United States have experienced dangerous temperatures in the 90s and triple digits.

UT San Antonio researchers have been working in the San Antonio community to better understand extreme heat’s impact and to develop strategies to protect the most vulnerable residents.

The temperatures in dense urban neighborhoods can be hotter than surrounding areas due to the abundance of concrete, which, unlike green spaces, absorbs and radiates heat. In San Antonio, 88% of residents live in “urban heat islands,” experiencing temperatures of at least 8 degrees higher than adjacent neighborhoods, according to Climate Central. That means that 100-degree days feel more brutal and come with increased danger of heat stroke.

In 2023, the hottest summer on record, the city of San Antonio reported 835 heat-related illnesses. The next year the number decreased to 571. As of Sept. 20, the city has reported 432 heat-related illnesses this year. Incorporating technology into heat research gives the cooling program another resource, said Leslie Antunez, senior municipal sustainability manager with the city’s office of sustainability.

“When we design cities, we are changing the structure of the environment,” says Kristen E. Brown, an assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering, and construction management. “In order to make things accessible, we have roadways, but those roadways are covering up what could be a field. When you add extra pavement for those mobility purposes, you add various things that are producing waste heat and removing ways for heat to leave the system. This leads to urban environments being a couple degrees hotter than rural environments.”

Through years of research UTSA professors Esteban Lopez Ochoa and Kristen Brown are evaluating the environments people live in in San Antonio. They know infrastructure needs to change otherwise certain pockets of the city will just get hotter and hotter.

“In paved areas there’s much higher temps…San Antonio has a lot of highways…those temperatures are often a lot higher near those highways," Brown said.

Ochoa and Brown have found downtown, East, West and Southside neighborhoods experience higher temperatures than most.

San Antonio officials worked closely with UTSA to identify the areas where the pavement was installed based on temperature readings and census data on neighborhood race, ethnicity and household income. “We looked not just where the heat hits harder but where people are more vulnerable to the heat and its effects,” said Kristen Brown, assistant professor of environmental engineering at UTSA. Energy burden, or how much of a household’s income is spent on utility bills, was one of the factors that helped identify areas where residents were more vulnerable and could benefit from the project, Brown said.

“Working across departments and with UTSA, we’re trying to figure out how do we leverage the existing resources that we have within the organization … to come up with a multiyear mitigation strategy?” Melnick told council members. “We’ve started community engagement in these neighborhoods. We want to understand how do they experience heat.”

The City of San Antonio partnered with the University of Texas at San Antonio's (UTSA) Sustainable Pervasive Urban Resilience (SPUR) Center to measure heat vulnerability in San Antonio and help direct resources toward the areas most impacted by extreme heat.

As commissioned by the Office of Sustainability of the City of San Antonio (CoSA), this report presents the results from the applied research conducted by UTSA faculty within the Sustainable, Pervasive Urban Resilience (SPUR) Center to help answer the question “How Can We Direct City Resources Toward the Areas Most Impacted by Extreme Heat?” It is not a secret that the City of San Antonio experiences extreme heat. Beyond causing discomfort, every year, residents visit the hospital as a result of exposure to this hazard. Heat vulnerability is not uniform across San Antonio due to the built-environment and socioeconomic conditions, impacting some areas more than others. Therefore, it is important that heat reduction actions are conducted prioritizing areas that are most vulnerable to heat and its impacts. To help ensure the City’s efforts are most effectively targeted, this analysis applies analytical techniques to quantify vulnerability to heat.

Click on a state on the graph to generate the results in the graph to the right