Heat Warning Detection System - Utilizing Connective Solutions to Reduce Heat-Related Deaths in Low-Income Communities

Every year, Arizona mobile home residents suffer hundreds of fatalities and severe illnesses due to the effects of extreme heat within their homes exacerbated by high energy costs, a lack of energy-efficient infrastructure, and underlying socio-economic issues. Many of these deaths and severe illnesses can be prevented via active monitoring and reporting of temperature and humidity data from these living spaces. The team will design, build, test, and implement a Heat Warning Detection System (HWDS) to mitigate heat-related illnesses and deaths. The HWDS will detect when temperature and humidity levels have reached a dangerous threshold and will issue notifications to the emergency contacts of the resident over SMS and/or email. This will allow for timely preventative measures to be taken to ensure the safety of the resident. The team will investigate the ideal threshold to notify the mobile home residents. HWDS will require minimal user interaction. Apart from the initial physical installation of the device, the user will have to provide a list of emergency contacts that they would like the system to notify in the event that HWDS detects dangerous conditions in their residence. By deploying prototypes of HWDS to volunteer participant homes, we will be able to validate the functionality of the system as well as the usability of the physical device by homeowners. HWDS provides homeowners and their loved ones with the opportunity to take preventative measures before being exposed to conditions that could potentially have more severe implications. In the spirit of promoting accessibility and prevention among the most vulnerable communities in Greater Phoenix, our team partners with the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience at ASU (KER) to interface with organizations such as the Arizona Association of Manufactured Home, RV & Park Model Owners (AAMHO) to promote legislation and subsidies aimed towards making solutions such as ours more financially viable for the communities that need it most.