As heat waves intensify in Iowa, a mobile app aims to prevent heat-related illnesses

Extreme heat is one of the deadliest forms of natural disaster in the United States, resulting in hundreds of deaths each year.

In Iowa, it leads to hundreds of emergency room visits annually. Cody Smith, director of climate initiatives at the Iowa Environmental Council, said between 2003 and 2023, an average of 875 Iowans have gone to the emergency room each year for heat-related illnesses.

“Since the end of 2015, every year has been above that statewide average, sometimes by as many as 306 visits per year, as seen in 2018,” Smith said.

Researchers at Iowa State University have been exploring ways to prevent heat-related illness during heat waves.

Their latest work includes development of a mobile app that can alert residents when their home starts to overheat.

The app “CommHEAT” — which still is in its pilot stage — was tested over the summer with neighborhoods in Des Moines that feature older architecture, some of which are more than 100 years old.

More than half the homes and residences included in the app’s research do not have central air conditioning, and many did not have an air conditioning system at all.

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“As far as we know, this localized and personalized heat emergency prediction is not available elsewhere yet,” said Ulrike Passe, architecture professor and director of the Center for Building Energy Research at ISU. Passe led the project with a team of faculty who have worked with her on a variety of related projects.

Smith said research like this is vital.

“The CommHeat app and similar efforts to provide vulnerable residents with the information they need to protect themselves is a critical step in protecting public health,” Smith said. “This problem is not going to go away, and our communities need more strategies to respond.”

Diving into the app

The CommHEAT program is a three-year collaborative project that was awarded $1.2 million in funding by the U.S. National Science Foundation, aimed at developing a “community-focused, indoor heat emergency alert system to help vulnerable residents and city planners.”

Passe said the app serves three main purposes: to provide users with the indoor temperature and heat index predictions in their residence; to connect users with family, friends and neighbors to make sure their homes aren’t overheating; and to provide information about where to find public help during heat waves.

Not only does the app report to users the temperature of their home, but it also, using modeling from the ISU researchers, can predict the changes in a home’s indoor temperature and heat index up to 12 hours in advance.

Passe said the forecast feature of the app can help users prepare for heat waves if they do not have central air and take action before the extreme heat conditions become dangerous.

With the app’s networking feature, Passe said users can see the conditions inside friends’ and family members’ homes.

“Like your granny who's at home with a broken foot, you can actually see what her house is potentially doing,” Passe said.

Passe said another key element of the app was to include resources for Iowans during heat waves. This mainly includes cooling centers, she said. The CommHEAT app is able to connect users with cooling centers in their area and provide them with directions through Google Maps.

She said the app gives users a range of possible temperatures in their home.

“We learned that it's important not to predict a single temperature, but to have ranges because we are not certain exactly what the weather will do, nor are we certain what the building will do,” Passe said. “The wind direction could change a little bit, or solar radiation (or a) little cloud could all be changes in the temperature.”

Despite the app being up and running, Passe said the tool is not yet in smartphone app stores. She said their next step — although somewhat funding dependent — is to develop a business plan to bring CommHEAT to app stores so users can download the tool for free.

Passe said that with the research she and her team have completed so far, the app can currently only alert Iowans who live in the Des Moines East Capitol area. She said this is because that’s where they completed their testing using volunteers.

However, she said “the framework” of the app could be applied anywhere.

“Some preliminary work would be necessary, which you know could be done funded by another study,” Passe said. “Ideally, there would be a next step to make this available to more communities, but that will need further exploration.”

Smith said that he likes the idea of the app and how it could serve Iowans.

“I think it could be a transformative, low-cost option for communities if it's expanded,” Smith said. “This area, especially with the addition of machine learning, could provide effective ways for Iowa communities to better protect vulnerable residents from extreme heat.”

Further policy needed

Smith said local governments and “especially cities” should be thinking proactively about establishing heat mitigation plans beyond traditional thinking about cooling centers, which usually only serve Iowans without permanent housing.

“Proactive approaches in identifying areas of communities that suffer from the urban heat island effect will be critical to identifying the most vulnerable communities in our state,” Smith said. “Local public health officials should prioritize the identification of which members of their communities are most vulnerable to heat-related illness in order to develop strategies to keep them safe during heat waves.”

Pointing to Iowans with respiratory and cardiovascular diseases specifically, Smith said people with preexisting conditions can be more sensitive to extreme heat. He said they also can have medical devices — like defibrillators — they depend on that could be vulnerable during potential power outages during heat waves.

But even as heat waves are intensifying and becoming more common in Iowa, air conditioning units are not required in rental units in Iowa.

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As of 2023, around 9 percent of Linn County residential properties — or about one in 10 homes — didn’t have air conditioning, according to data from the Linn County and Cedar Rapids assessors' offices. The data did not include commercial properties like apartment complexes. It also may not have reflected recent changes to properties that hadn’t been captured in assessor data yet.

Smith said the Iowa Environmental Council works directly with local governments to help them understand which neighborhoods in their communities may have residents with higher rates of existing chronic illnesses that make them more susceptible to heat-related illness, like coronary heart disease.

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“We do this through the information displayed in our Climate Change and Environmental Health map that displays which areas of a community have higher disease prevalence and which areas of a community has more areas with impervious surfaces that make them susceptible to the urban heat island effect,” he said.

Smith said IEC also is planning to engage with local public health and emergency management personnel across the state to walk through scenarios that include vulnerable populations during extreme weather events.

Smith said that Iowans who work outdoors in extreme heat are the most affected during heat waves.

“However, all Iowans should be concerned about the troubling and rapid rise in heat-related emergency department visits,” Smith said, adding that Iowa’s nighttime temperature on average has risen about 2.2 degrees since 1970.

Actionable next steps

Smith said there are three main “actionable strategies” when thinking about what local governments and communities can do to combat extreme heat in Iowa.

“First, identifying gaps in the urban tree canopy can help identify which neighborhoods and homes are most vulnerable to extreme heat,” he said. “This can drive new investments in tree plantings and other green infrastructure to reduce the urban heat island effect.”

Smith said another key step is to invest more in residences that are not insulated well.

“Assisting low-income families whose homes may be poorly insulated or have little-to-no air conditioning should be prioritized for energy efficient upgrades to HVAC, insulation, appliances and others,” he said.

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Smith said there are existing programs in some communities that show returns on investment when energy efficient upgrades are made. He pointed to the Neighborhood Finance Corp's Advantage Deferred Loan Program as an example.

He said communities also can step beyond local cooling centers and into “community resilience hubs.”

These “are buildings that activate during a natural disaster and serve to provide reliable electricity and clean drinking water to those who need it,” he said.

Olivia Cohen covers energy and environment for The Gazette and is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. She is also a contributing writer for the Ag and Water Desk, an independent journalism collaborative focusing on the Mississippi River Basin.

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Comments: olivia.cohen@thegazette.com