‘Project to help formulate efficient heat management plan’

To study the impact that summer heat has on the body in inducing stress, The Centre for Atmospheric Sciences (CAS) at IIT-Delhi is conducting a study to develop India-specific heat stress tolerance thresholds, the institute said on Wednesday.

Explaining the study, the institute said that heat stress is the stress felt by the body when exposed to heat in the summer and the project will help in formulating a better and efficient heat management plan across the country as heat stress is expected to rise due to global warming.

The study is part of a project, Heat Stress Index for India: projection for near future, undertaken by IIT-Delhi in partnership with five other institutes in the country.

The study will include a population-based survey through which the Centre will collect data about the people’s perception of heat exposure along with direct measurement of stress condition and thermal imaging of human physiology under heat stress.

“The survey is seeking people’s response to questions about the time of the day they felt maximum discomfort, nature of the day, whether it was dry and hot or humid, what kind of activity they undertook on a particular day,” the institute also said.

Elaborating on the study, Sagnik Dey from CAS, IIT-Delhi, the project’s principal investigator, said that heat stress condition arises when the body starts feeling stressed in balancing the body temperature and under searing heat, the human body struggles and can suffer heat stroke.