TREASURE mobile app: A satellite-enabled application for personalized heatwave risk based on location and user profile

High temperatures and heatwaves are associated with large increases in mortality, especially among susceptible individuals living in urban areas. The within-city variability in the effects associated with specific area characteristics, including the Urban Heat Island effect, have to be taken into account to estimate the level of heatwave risk associated with a specific city location. Real-time appraisal and quantification of spatially distributed heatwave risk is therefore required to develop innovative applications to safeguard citizens' health. TREASURE app (http://treasure.eu-project-sites.com/) integrates the expertise of epidemiologists, Earth Observation scientists and IT developers into intelligent operational and real-time heatwave risk assessment for citizens. The app provides the user with an assessment of personalized location-specific heatwave risk. For the development of the app an epidemiological analysis of a long series of mortality data against measured data series has been carried out to identify the temperature level associated with the minimum mortality (threshold) and the change in risk of death for increases in temperature above this level, in the warm period. Published results have been also taken into account. For the estimation of heatwave hazard thermal infrared Earth Observation data were exploited so as to provide spatially and temporally detailed air and land surface temperatures. An advanced workflow has been developed that uses 4 km/5' geostationary TIR data from EUMETSAT MSG2-SEVIRI satellite, output from the Global Forecast System weather model and SAFNWC software. This workflow consists of the preprocessing of the EO data and the retrieval of LST and TA at an enhanced spatial resolution of 1km. The mobile app was developed for, evaluated in and endorsed by two Mediterranean cities with different characteristics, namely Athens (GR) and Palma (ES) and has set the ground for application to any other European city.