This heat map shows the difference in temperatures across San Antonio. The dark orange represents the hottest areas and dark blue represents the coolest.
SEPTEMBER 25, 2023 — Southwest Research Institute and UTSA are collaborating to study the “felt heat” of San Antonio’s historic West Side. The prevalence of paved surfaces creates an environment that feels considerably hotter than the rest of the city.
The work, led by Principal Scientist Stuart Stothoff of SwRI’s Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Division and Esteban Lopez Ochoa of the Margie and Bill Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design at UTSA, is supported by a $125,000 grant from the Connecting through Research Partnerships (Connect) Program.
“If you look back in time, the West Side has always been somewhat neglected,” Lopez Ochoa said. “The consideration was not there to keep green spaces, which are cooler and offer more shade than pavement, which absorbs heat. It’s just easier to pave. When you compare different areas of the city, that area does lack vegetation much more than other areas of San Antonio.”
As a result of the greater amount of paved surfaces on the West Side, people there experience considerably more heat than in the rest of the city. Recent measurements by Lopez Ochoa showed temperatures as high as 154 degrees Fahrenheit just above the pavement.
“We’re working to precisely characterize what’s going on in this unusually hot area of the city, so that eventually a solution can be found to alleviate it,” Stothoff said.
Over the next year, SwRI and UTSA will place sensors in representative locations around the West Side to measure the felt heat in various environments. The sensors will gather data on air flow, wind speeds, relative humidity, air temperatures and dew points.
“The publicly available information about the heat measured on the West Side is satellite data, derived from visible or infrared wavelengths. It’s useful, but it doesn’t characterize the actual felt heat,” Stothoff said. “Satellite data also doesn’t allow you to see underneath the trees, in the shade. By placing our sensors in various key locations, we can measure the temperatures people actually feel.”
Stothoff and Lopez are also considering putting sensors inside homes on the West Side and are working with the Historic Westside Neighborhood Association and the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center to connect with residents who might be willing to participate.
Once the data gathering is complete, SwRI will create an energy balance model to comprehensively evaluate the felt environment and adapt publicly available weather data to better represent ambient temperatures and overall thermal comfort on the West Side.
SwRI’s Executive Office and the UTSA Office of the Vice President for Research, Economic Development, and Knowledge Enterprise sponsor the Connect program, which offers grant opportunities to enhance greater scientific collaboration between the two institutions.
UTSA Today is produced by University Communications and Marketing, the official news source of The University of Texas at San Antonio. Send your feedback to news@utsa.edu. Keep up-to-date on UTSA news by visiting UTSA Today. Connect with UTSA online at Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Instagram.
Join UTSA Libraries and Museums to learn more about the publishing discounts available for UTSA researchers.
Virtual Event (Zoom)PubMed is an essential database for anyone conducting biomedical or health-related research. This workshop will teach attendees how to effectively navigate this free resource and locate peer-reviewed articles using advanced search features, MeSH subject headings, and Boolean operators.
Virtual Event (Zoom)Join us for a hands-on workshop about the basics of copyright, both in education and as a researcher. We’ll dispel some common copyright myths, differences between copyright law and other intellectual property law, and teach you how to apply a Fair Use checklist to your scholarly work.
Virtual Event (Zoom)In this workshop, we will explore sentiment analysis, a method for identifying feelings in text, whether the tone is positive, negative, or neutral.
Group Spot B, John Peace LibraryLearn to use the simple but powerful features of EndNote®, a citation management tool. In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn to setup an EndNote library, save references and PDFs, and automatically create and edit a bibliography.
Virtual Event ( Zoom)The Urban Bird Project at UTSA will discuss urban bird populations, conservation efforts, and how you can get involved.
JPL Assembly Room (4.04.22,) Main CampusThe DMPTool is a free online resource that helps researchers create data management plans. This workshop will cover the main components of DMPs and how to create them using the DMPTool. Attendees will learn to: locate templates by funding agency, add research collaborators, and identify institutional guidance.
Virtual Event (Zoom)The University of Texas at San Antonio is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge through research and discovery, teaching and learning, community engagement and public service. As an institution of access and excellence, UTSA embraces multicultural traditions and serves as a center for intellectual and creative resources as well as a catalyst for socioeconomic development and the commercialization of intellectual property - for Texas, the nation and the world.
To be a premier public research university, providing access to educational excellence and preparing citizen leaders for the global environment.
We encourage an environment of dialogue and discovery, where integrity, excellence, inclusiveness, respect, collaboration and innovation are fostered.
UTSA is a proud Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) as designated by the U.S. Department of Education .
The University of Texas at San Antonio, a Hispanic Serving Institution situated in a global city that has been a crossroads of peoples and cultures for centuries, values diversity and inclusion in all aspects of university life. As an institution expressly founded to advance the education of Mexican Americans and other underserved communities, our university is committed to promoting access for all. UTSA, a premier public research university, fosters academic excellence through a community of dialogue, discovery and innovation that embraces the uniqueness of each voice.
