Environmental Work

The Philadelphia Heat Vulnerability Index (HVI) summarizes the key factors associated with the negative health effects of extreme heat events. Created by Jason Hammer, MPH in collaboration with the Philadelphia Department of Public Health and Office of Sustainability.

For the 2022-2023 academic year, Dr. Composto will be co-leading the Research Community titled “Adapting to Extreme Heat in Philadelphia to Increase Human Vitality.” This initiative is a collaboration with the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Sustainability (OOS) in order to address the issues of increased precipitation/flooding, increased heat, and urban heatsinks. This work is funded by the Penn Environmental Innovations Initiative as one of their Research Communities that study areas with broad environmental significance and this project aims to increase student engagement and produce at least one public-facing outcome.

Other leaders of the project are: Kristin Field, Director of Education and Professional Development for an NSF Research Traineeship project and the Singh Center for Nanotechnology.

Together with the leadership of the Penn Institute for Urban Research (Co-Directors and Professors Eugenie Birch and Susan Wachter and Managing Director Amy Montgomery), they seek to deepen connections with OOS to determine whether Penn’s faculty and students could contribute to the immediate and longer-term City plans for adaptation to extreme heat events.


Check out some of our group’s recent environmental work:

Combating urban heat: Summer 2022 Composto undergraduate researchers rising junior Sarah Sterinbach & rising sophomore Seito Sanford