Due to population growth, climate change, and the urban heat island effect, heat exposure is becoming an important issue faced by urban built environments. Heat exposure assessment is a prerequisite for mitigation measures to reduce the impact of heat exposure. However, there is limited research on urban heat exposure assessment approaches that provides fine-scale spatiotemporal heat exposure information, integrated with meteorological status and human collective exposure as they move about in cities, to enable proactive heat exposure mitigation measures. Smart city digital twins (SCDTs) provide a new potential avenue for addressing this gap, enabling fine spatiotemporal scales, human-infrastructure interaction modeling, and predictive and decision support capabilities.
Government entities play a crucial role in the implementation and advancement of SCDTs. As cities strive for greater resilience and efficiency, government support is essential in collecting high spatiotemporal granularity meteorology and human behavior data. Through continuous analysis and interpretation of this data, governments can proactively provide references and decision-making support for mitigating heat exposure and other urban challenges.
