Measuring Heat, Uncovering Inequality: A Community-Engaged Approach to Indoor Thermal Exposure in Latin American Cities
Dr. Nubia Beray
Assistant Professor
Department of Geography
University of Indiana Bloomington
Abstract:
Human Biometeorology and Urban Climate research have significantly advanced our understanding of urban heat, particularly through models, satellite data and physical measurements of urban fabric, geometry, and surface characteristics. Yet these approaches can be further strengthened by examining heat alongside the socio-spatial conditions in which it is experienced — inside homes, within domestic spaces, and through bodies differentiated by race, gender and class. This talk draws on a community-engaged project that co-produces methods to monitor indoor thermal exposure in informal housing in Brazil, informed by Critical Physical Geography, Critical Urban Climatology and Geography of Climate frameworks. It approaches heat as a sociobiophysical phenomenon, shaped through the entanglement of built form and urban metabolism, everyday life, colonial histories and structural inequalities. Thus, it is not only essential to locate the intersections between thermal hazards and vulnerable bodies and homes; it is equally necessary to understand how extreme heat, exposure and vulnerability structure one another, rather than existing as separate domains. In this sense, knowing where the city is hottest is inseparable from knowing who bears that heat — and how both are produced together.