 What am I missing? It seems to me the college is a higher affluence area. There's lots of housing Lots of businesses What what am I missing? Why is it right? So so this Theme that we're looking at right now is the housing transportation theme right composed of large apartment buildings mobile homes crowding no vehicle and group quarters So you can imagine when you have a large population of students and we actually have another map that just shows you the population of students That As a percentage of that census tract How many people live in large apartment buildings a dorm is going to qualify as a large apartment building, right? How many people don't have a vehicle? The measure on crowding is housing units with more than one person per room Right so so Not the term I was doesn't mean what I thought it meant And because Large populations of college-aged Adults can skew things in that way That's why we have a map that's just strictly of that so that you can see which are those communities that might be getting thrown off because of the presence of a college-age population The data is not that great 57% college-age and some living in poverty is interestingly almost 20% Just because their parents had one on student support I First the data between the Census and the annual stuff. I think what I'm hearing is that the annual report gives you Greater depth of data, but the census gives you a larger sample size Any other questions before we move on to Heat vulnerability Yes, yeah, so I noted that you have Had the good fortune to have interns updating us That does make me a little nervous though about whether or not it's a consistent Or it's just something that you're interested in doing or it's something that you're kind of compelled to do That's an astute observation so environmental public health tracking has Nationally consistent data and measures that the CDC requires us to host locally and those include You know a dozen different types of cancer At the county and sub county level lots of hospitalization data Environmental data on air quality and water quality social vulnerability index is not one of those Required data sense same would be true of like the cyanobacteria tracker the tick tracker Those are tools that we've developed because we think that you know, there's a local interest or local demand that said it's not Critical to the functioning of the program we're not required to do it and a lot of the most interesting work that we do is Powered by the the sweat equity of the interns who come and work with us because You know, we've got the work that we're required to do But there might be some interesting project and if you get someone who's very capable and can do that kind of work it it's a real blessing and a real value For the health department and The GIS manager both Pete and now the new GIS manager Dan Jarvis had been really good about having a pipeline of Capable GIS interns to come in and do that work, but if they weren't there Yeah, it would not happen unless You know, we were required to do it for some other we had some other way of having the capacity to go So but the institutional knowledge of how to do it does Exist outside of your interns Yeah, I mean we have to retain it because the interns don't overlap And so we've got you know good documentation on how to how to do the updates And and I wasn't able to find the college age map At the tip of my fingers, but also send that one Jared Olmer climate and health program manager at the Department of Health I Can keep this pretty brief because it's built a lot on what David has already conveyed and just keep more time for for questions, but Similar to what David was just saying. This is something that was a Project that was completed by the same intern initially as a kind of a proof of concept of how do we take the social vulnerability Index as kind of a foundation and apply that to a specific climate related health hazard so so essentially what we were able to do was Choose social vulnerability index layers that were were clearly related to risk for heat illnesses and then add in other data sources that we could find that also related to heat related risk so we added a Bunch of different health related factors from some of our Our yearly Behavioral risk factor surveillance survey that's conducted in Vermont that gives us information about Current health conditions and health status We added some environmental characteristics related to Urban characteristics Essentially how much impervious surface is there how much tree cover is there? Because you know in places that have less trees and more hard surface temperatures tend to feel hotter We added some data about the frequency that people experience heat around Vermont and found counter-intuitively that Places in Vermont that experience them the least frequent heat tended to experience the most frequent heat health impacts which we attribute to Kind of lack of adaptation in terms of just our bodies need to acclimate to warmer temperatures our buildings Are only designed with air conditioning in places that experience frequent enough heat to warrant it And then we also incorporated some data about the actual The emergency department visits for heat related impacts that we have experienced in recent years And stacked those on top of some of those social vulnerability layers So you can see on the screen here both the map and sort of how we categorize our 17 different Indicators group them a little bit differently than for the social vulnerability index Into six different categories and I should I won't get into the weeds unless you want to know more about this But we have somewhat different analytical methods for creating this index instead of the the flagging of census tracts we did this at the city and town level and Everything is kind of on a on a continuous scale. So we're looking at We're looking at relative risks for every town compared to the average in Vermont and And sort of adding Putting those in the same quantitative scale and adding them together. So there's a lot more behind the scenes Computation that's going on here, which is I think both a strength and a weakness of this is all I'll mention So what you're seeing here is not based on flags, but it's it's almost it's almost more of a ranking of Every city in town compared relatively Against the average risk For heat illnesses in Vermont. So the blues you see are the places in Vermont that we found the least Risk factors for heat illnesses and the reds are the places that we found the highest risk for heat illnesses You're probably asking why is the Northeast Kingdom? Coming up the most red Which was sort of a surprise to us as well But we found that That a lot of the the underlying risk factors social economic status pre-existing health conditions high percentage of older adults those tended to be some of the most critical risk factors for the for the Northeast and actually defined in our Historic data that Many of the the communities in the Northeast have experienced higher rates of heat illnesses per capita Than other parts of the state We also found urbanized areas were generally at higher risk. A lot of that was because of the environmental characteristics Less tree canopy more hard surfaces also in some of those lower social economic status And in contrast places like Chittenden County Windsor and to some extent Wyndham We're at lower risk Largely due to higher socioeconomic status And sort of lower prevalence of pre-existing health conditions that put people at higher risk for for heat illnesses I'm just gonna flip to the back of this this two pager is Should have been shared with you and is on our website, but this just kind of breaks down our our six themes of of indicators so you can see how some of those vary You also note that some of for some of these indicators. We had city and town level data So the population environmental social economic data a lot of that was census data or for some of the environmental ones We had satellite data or something. That's you know, even more granular than census data So those we could you we could display at the city and town level whereas a lot of our health data And temperature data and heat emergency data when you know, we could only get that at the county level or in some instances You can see where we were able to Go a little bit more local where the data allowed us to Between the different themes Right, right, yeah, that's where you see the most overlap Which then you know shows up in our our overall theme pretty clearly, but yeah, there's not a lot of obvious pattern in some of these or Overlap between the themes. We can't see the urbanized areas very well at this scale without you know, blowing your way up But you do see you know a little bit more of kind of consistency across Across some of the more urbanized communities It's hard to tell at this level It does an area in the Northeast Kingdom. It's hatched From legend that says population is less than six persons Really? Less than six persons in an entire area up there in the Gours I think there are three or four You gotta have just kidnapped them there buddy That's the best remote, I might have to fly But the one thing that this analytical method let us do which I think is a bit of a strength is To provide to provide a little bit more of a granular overall index Where we can see No, if there were communities that were kind of like 80th percentile on a lot of things on the social vulnerability index They wouldn't get flagged at all, but if you were at 80 percent Risk across the board for all the indicators that you know stacks up To to larger risk so that this method can capture The accumulation of kind of moderate levels of risk Versus the SPI which which only captures high levels of risk for the indicators with The downside is I was mentioning that this is a lot more challenging to develop You can see our May 2016 date up in the top right corner That we created this initially have not updated it largely because of the level of effort required To update it. It's also a little more challenging to communicate about David mentioned how simple It is to communicate about the flags where they come from how they stack This is a lot more challenging because there's a lot of math going on on the back end of it So we actually are getting ready to update this in 2020 But we're going to this is kind of a proof of concept when we did it and we wanted to try a different method But after using this for a few years We're going to go to a method very similar to the social vulnerability index method So we can do regular updates and hopefully communicated about it a little bit easier than we can with this The one other thing I wanted to mention just about how how it's been used So This is a little flip and maybe a little silly, but why are you updating it? From what reason are you updating it sure part of it's just because it's been four years So it's been on our mind that some of this data is getting somewhat dated We have some extra capacity in our program right now That we haven't had before so we have more ability to do this than in previous years some of it is related to some of what I spoke about a couple weeks ago with the heat wave in 2018 and the impacts from that heat wave and all of the Increased emphasis on preparedness for heat getting a lot of attention. It seems like a The topic that's getting so much attention. We don't want to be I don't want to be sharing older data if at all possible You know, we want to be able to use the latest and greatest data. There's a lot of Detailed data that we got from about health impacts from that heat wave that aren't incorporated here The those data will become available this year that we can incorporate in So those are a couple of reasons data Historically it's been a challenge to kind of go out and extract data With the current big data Facebook all that sort of stuff They'll sell information to anybody Would it be more efficient to kind of compile a list? I mean if Facebook can overhear you talking about You know picking up a box of tissues on the way home and then you know five seconds later you get mad for Puffs plus or whatever There's obviously some data there would something like that be helpful to you know More rapidly and hopefully more accurately Portray the entire state It's a really interesting question I'd probably mostly deferred to David on this one. The one thing I can mention is that we and I'm not sure how Place specific we can get with it, but we do use Google analytics to some extent to try to Mostly just experimentally to see how we can track people searching for How to remove a tick or you know something like that mostly to check seasonal patterns In some of these some of these impacts. We haven't tried to drill down Spatially much. I'm not sure how much we can do that But that's that's one lead we can pursue On the the purchasing data. I'll just say that our resources are certainly Little to none for supporting a lot of this our labor is as our most significant resource, so There would be challenges for us to be able to purchase data. Is that something that's come up in the Public health tracking conversations No we haven't pursued Pulling in Social network Type data, I mean the way that we're getting the census data is we have a script that pulls it automatically from the Census Bureau and so You know, there's there's a pretty huge labor saving there because you're not downloading individual data sets So that's that's relatively efficient and you know could even potentially be automated So that you wouldn't necessarily have to be doing it to manually each year I Know that at UVM Chris Danforth is doing Research like complex systems research to look at indicators of health and happiness by doing Analysis of like, you know the words that are getting used on Twitter So, you know people have have definitely done work like that to look at Disease outbreaks based on the types of surges that that people are doing. It's not been something that we pursued in track I just wanted to mention especially now that you're back in the room. No, that's fine Just about how we've used this because I know that was one of your your questions And I would say when we created this initially like I said, it's kind of a proof of concept We didn't have a clear application in mind at the time But we we have found this to be useful for Supporting an energy saving trees program that we partner with the urban and community forestry program And it's it's kind of a it's an arbor day national program that we help sponsor and deliver with the forestry folks And it's intended to help people With planting trees near their home either to increase shade or increase windbreak and lower their energy bills We've also sort of taken the approach of a lot of people don't have energy Cooling energy bills in the summer, but these trees will still help increase shade and keep homes from from getting getting warmer so we've We've been working on this program with forestry since 2017 and Have targeted towards the communities that rate the highest level of risk on the heat vulnerability index and then Also relate in the highest category of risk on the environmental theme of the heat vulnerability index So we've delivered this program in Newport, Bennington, Rutland, Barrie and St. Albans And it's provided about a thousand trees those to just the urban cores of those communities Residents are able to sign up and and Reserve one or two trees and are kind of guided through a process of where to most efficiently plant the tree So this is has been directly related to that I would say mostly we've used it just as an educational tool to be able to help communicate about the heat related risk factors I use this in a lot of presentations and and use it to just illustrate how we identify risk factors for specific climate-related health outcomes and How those risk factors then can drive the strategies for you know, if it's an urbanized area, maybe it's environmental solutions If it's the north northeast kingdom maybe there are home modification or Neighbor check-on neighbor kind of safety solutions that we need to be thinking about Do you know if there's any requirement across state government to in a highlight vulnerability The different populations that are served by the different agencies and departments So is this something that we would find if we started probing all the different agencies like some element of these places are In the biggest trouble or have you know the most need of repair I Don't think there's another requirements That the use of tools like this has definitely become more common in the last few years the social vulnerability index I think is pretty what widely used I know the CDC has a national social vulnerability index as well. That's available for anybody Even if you haven't created a state specific one Some of these tools like the heat vulnerability index a lot of the state climate health programs are using that only covers 16 states though But a lot of the climate health programs have been encouraged but not required to develop these Yeah, there's 16 states in two cities that are funded by the CDC like ours to support a climate health program at their health departments and one of our It's not a requirement, but the CDC asks us to consider developing tools like vulnerability indices to help Help demonstrate the spatial variability of risk within our communities So we've all been kind of dabbling with these and so is that Information from other states easily Accessible do you have that information or could you point us to a place where we could see that information? Yeah, I don't have it at my fingertips, but I could certainly go back and find a few examples to send to you So to hone in on what I was just talking about You said it's this kind of tool is more widely used now or becoming more widely used who uses it I mean what I'm aware of is mostly just through these other climate health programs at health departments that have used it for for heat for flooding risks Some some air pollution risks So I think they have some of these other states have used these again largely as a communication education tool, but also the hope is these are places that We're identifying that need more resources to mitigate Whatever the climate related health risk is so you know with the energy saving trees program for example If we can find the communities that are going to most benefit from that strategy by using a tool like this that gives us a better starting place than You know other other information that we might have available Can I piggyback on In terms of who's using it another group that I know is using Social vulnerability index and that's expressed an interest in the heat vulnerability index is a group of Community advocates and researchers They're calling themselves rejoice. I don't know what the acronym stands for but it includes Vermont law school Which is stood up an environmental justice clinic The Environmental justice is the EJ Let's see who else is part of it UVM Toxic action center. I think that healthy communities foundation So what they're trying to do is understand what is environmental justice mean in the context of a rural state like Vermont And so they've been conducting these environmental justice community panels around the state to talk to People who you know usually don't necessarily have much of a voice About what are the environmental stressors that that they're dealing with in their lives They are paying for transportation. They're providing childcare. They're providing dinner in order to you know try to encourage people to come Who otherwise might not? There's one of these community Panels is happening tonight at the Gateway Center in Newport From 6 8 p.m. So The the folks Bindu Panakar is the UVM professor who's contributing to it She's trying to develop an environmental justice index sort of similar to the stuff that that you've seen today So And they're very interested in the question of rural Vermont and how they are adversely affected by either environmental Pollution or climate change and it might be an interesting group to speak to One other tool, maybe I'll mention quickly. I would like to one of your earlier questions There there's an organization of Vermont called Community Resilience Organizations that developed a community resilience assessment tool that that looks at it's like kind of like a community self-assessment on how prepared the community is both for impacts of climate change and for Taking action to address climate change It's probably only been used in 10 to 20 communities in Vermont It's a pretty small program. So it's not a great statewide comprehensive data source but it it really gets at some of the questions you were asking earlier that kind of go beyond what we can Demonstrate through something like the the vulnerability index Community resilience organizations the director is Mindy Blank Wow presented There's a resiliency study group, and it's actually part of a climate caucus that has actually been convening from rural communities And and I think that that group presented to that Netals online too, I can send that as well Yeah, that would be great And it gets that question of like what what is the right thing to be measuring when you're talking about like social Cohesion or social isolation those aren't You know explicit variables in the census data So so how do you capture information? if one other caveat that I would put on Social vulnerability index is what you're looking at is the The the worst top 10 percent for any of those indicators Relative to the rest of how Vermont is doing, right? So if you wanted to compare data from say 2013 to 2018 They're still going to be a worst top 10 percent Because you're comparing to how the rest of the state is doing at that time So if let's say the whole state improved uniformly That wouldn't be reflected because the the same top 10 percent would still look like They're they're the worst top 10 percent and so in order to do sort of those longitudinal comparisons You would need to change the methodology so that you had a fixed baseline that you were comparing against So you could have more sort of absolute values to see how you changed over time because this is really a relative indicator Of how you compare to the rest of the state The absolute values are in there when I clicked on a census track and it popped up and showed you There you go