Experts come up with a new heat index to make assessing risks easier

Experts from various institutions have come up with a new way to explain the impact of heat in a way that is easy to understand for everyone. They call their new index “heat power.” This term sees temperature being combined with humidity, radiant heat, and wind.

“By combining all these factors, one can make a better risk assessment on hot days than with temperature alone. This way, you ensure that people can better prepare for a certain heat load," the initiators explained.

The index was developed by the TNO, KNMI, RIVM, and the Vrije Universiteit. The reason for developing the system is that Dutch people have to deal with heat more often because of global warming.

The institutions want to help both the public and employees in various professions. The index would be able to help elderly people and visitors of events to take appropriate measures. “A lot of the time, we only look at the temperature, but other factors are also crucial for the effect of warmth on a person,” thermophysiologist Boris Kingma from TNO explained.

The idea is that heat power would be an easy-to-understand scale in a similar way to wind power “which quickly evokes an association with most people.”

How the index will look precisely is something that the inventors are still working on. For example, it still has to be decided to which number the index will go to. In visualizations, it is shown in four colors: red, orange, yellow, and green.