Emergency Department Visits and Summer Temperatures in Bologna, Northern Italy, 2010-2019: A Case-Crossover Study and Geographically Weighted Regression Methods.

The aim of the study is to evaluate the association between summer temperatures and emergency department visits (EDVs) in Bologna (Italy) and assess whether this association varies across areas with different socioeconomic and microclimatic characteristics. We included all EDVs within Bologna residences during the summers of 2010-2019. Each subject is attributed a deprivation and a microclimatic discomfort index according to the residence. A time-stratified case-crossover design was conducted to estimate the risk of EDV associated with temperature and the effect modification of deprivation and microclimatic characteristics. In addition, a spatial analysis of data aggregated at the census block level was conducted by applying a Poisson and a geographically weighted Poisson regression model. For each unit increase in temperature above 26 °C, the risk of EDV increases by 0.4% (95%CI: 0.05-0.8). The temperature-EDV relationship is not modified by the microclimatic discomfort index but rather by the deprivation index. The spatial analysis shows that the EDV rate increases with deprivation homogeneously, while it diminishes with increases in median income and microclimatic discomfort, with differences across areas. In conclusion, in Bologna, the EDV risk associated with high temperatures is not very relevant overall, but it tends to increase in areas with a low socioeconomic level.

The Utilization of the WMO-1234 Guidance to Improve Citizen's Wellness and Health: An Italian Perspective.

In 2019, the World Meteorological Organization published its "Guidance on Integrated Urban Hydrometeorological, Climate and Environment Services (Volume I: Concept and Methodology)" to assist WMO Members in developing and implementing the urban services that address the needs of city stakeholders in their countries. The guidance has relevant implications for not only protecting infrastructures from the impacts of climate change in the urban environment, but its proper declination strongly supports health-related policies to protect the population from direct and indirect impacts. Utilizing some principles of the guidance, the urbanized area of Bologna (Italy) was analyzed in order to furnish the municipality with tools coherent with the best practices actually emerging from the international bibliography to protect the citizens' health of this city. Specifically, the analysis concentrated on the public spaces and the potential vulnerabilities of the fragile population to high-temperature regimes in the city. Utilizing the guidance as a methodological framework, the authors developed a methodology to define the microclimate vulnerabilities of the city and specific cards to assist the policymakers in city regeneration. Because the medieval structure of the city does not allow the application of a wide set of nature-based solutions, our main attention was placed on the possibility of furnishing the city with a great number of pocket parks obtainable from spaces actually dedicated to parking lots, thus introducing new green infrastructures in a highly deprived area in order to assure safety spaces for the fragile population.

Microclimate Classification of Bologna (Italy) as a Support Tool for Urban Services and Regeneration.

A microclimate classification of the entire Bologna Municipality has been carried out in order to give a tool to the local administration in the drafting of the General Urbanistic Plan (PUG). The city was classified considering the variation of air temperature as a function of the surface characteristics, the vegetation fraction, the building density and the H/W ratio (height to width). Starting from the microclimate analysis carried out with fluid-dynamic modeling (Envi-met) for some areas of the city of urban interest, the air temperature variation was correlated to the physiological equivalent temperature (PET) in order to make a classification of physiological well-being for the resident population. An urban map of a normalized microclimate well-being index (BMN) has been obtained to give support when private, and public actors want to regenerate part of the city, taking into account the climate-centered approach for the development of a sustainability city.