Community Needs Assessment in Relation to Urban Heat Effects: A Study in Greater Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Urban areas usually experience higher temperatures compared with their rural surroundings; this is characterized as urban heat islands （UHIs）, which are the result of environmental overheating due to anthropic activities. Urban areas,which are characterised by massive construction that reduce local vegetation coverage, are subject to the absorption of a large amount of solar radiation,which is only partially released into the atmosphere by radiation in the thermal infrared.

Assessment of community health needs of Chongqing residents: a qualitative study

Objective: The aim of this preliminary qualitative study was to gain insight into community health needs in order to develop health program for community in Chongqing. Methods: Totally 40 participants were assigned into 6 focus group discussions. All groups were led by local language speakers, and their talking was recorded after gaining informed consent. Transcribed data were coded and subjected to thematic analysis. Results: The main obtained themes were that community health problems were chronic noncommunicable disease, main health service needs included regularly free check-up and health education, and perceived health risk factors were unhealthy lifestyle and behavior as well as environment problems. Conclusion: Our community health needs assessment (CHNA) with FGDs indicate that residents realize the importance of prevention of disease. Our study identifies that primarily community health promotion is one of the priorities of community health service needs, including reorienting health service, health education, guiding behavior or lifestyle, and creating healthy environments. The findings of this study can provide guidance to the development of more effective and pertinent health program in this community.

Leveraging Hazard,Exposure,and Social Vulnerability Data to Assess Flood Risk to Indigenous Communities in Canada

This study integrates novel data on 100-year flood hazard extents,exposure of residential properties,and place-based social vulnerability to comprehensively assess and compare flood risk between Indigenous communities living on 985 reserve lands and other Canadian communities across 3701 census subdivisions.National-scale exposure of residential properties to fluvial,pluvial,and coastal flooding was estimated at the 100-year return period.A social vulnerability index(SVI)was developed and included 49 variables from the national census that represent demographic,social,economic,cultural,and infrastructure/community indicators of vulnerability.Geographic information system-based bivariate choropleth mapping of the composite SVI scores and of flood exposure of residential properties and population was completed to assess the spatial variation of flood risk.We found that about 81%of the 985 Indigenous land reserves had some flood exposure that impacted either population or residential properties.Our analysis indicates that residential property-level flood exposure is similar between non-Indigenous and Indigenous communities,but socioeconomic vulnerability is higher on reserve lands,which confirms that the overall risk of Indigenous communities is higher.Findings suggest the need for more local verification of flood risk in Indigenous communities to address uncertainty in national scale analysis.