Demo Projects

We examine the association between weather extremes and persons buried in the nation’s largest indigent burial ground—Hart Island, New York, where more than one million unclaimed individuals are interred. Public burial records provide a window into mortality among particularly vulnerable populations. We connect public-burial deaths with extreme temperatures, and precipitation, in first of their kind analyses. This study takes place in two parts.

Older adults are particularly vulnerable to heat due to age-related physiological changes and chronic health conditions, which can impair the body’s ability to regulate temperature and maintain homeostasis during heat exposure.