CHAITRA – City Heat Action InTelligence and Risk Atlas Scaling evidence-based heat action planning in India
Heat Action Plans (HAPs) have evolved over the past decade into India’s principal framework for urban heat preparedness. Following national guidelines issued in 2016, many cities have established early warning systems, strengthened health system readiness, expanded public outreach, and, in some cases, developed vulnerability assessments and hotspot mapping.
EHI-N*: A Modified Extended Heat Index for Laboring Populations
Approximately 2.4 billion workers perform manual labor globally, yet current heat stress indices are calibrated to sedentary individuals, systematically underestimating risk for active workers.
Chaitra – Technical Specifications
CHAITRA is a ward-level decision support tool built on Google Earth Engine that can enable state and city officials to accelerate heat action planning, identify wards most at risk and estimate investment needed for different mitigation measures.
Manual Work Under Extreme Heat: Using EHI-N* to protect laboring populations
India’s roughly 380 million outdoor and heat-exposed workers face escalating danger from extreme heat, yet the metrics used to declare heatwaves and trigger protective action systematically underestimate their risk.