Madurai 7th most vulnerable world city facing heat risk

CHENNAI: People in Madurai are among those most vulnerable to rising temperatures globally, with the city ranking seventh among the world’s cities facing the highest heat risk, according to a University of Oxford study. Chennai ranks 50th.

The study found the risk is driven not just by high temperatures, but also by demographic and socio-economic factors, limited access to cooling technologies and ecological buffers such as tree cover. This means some places hotter than Madurai face a lesser risk because people may have more green cover or access to air-conditioning.

Published in Sustainable Cities and Society, the study assessed heat risk across 205 cities with populations exceeding one million. “In many major cities, particularly across Asia and Africa, extreme heat coincides with high vulnerability and limited coping capacity. This combination can substantially increase heat risk and, in some cases, have life-threatening consequences,” said corresponding author Nethmi Jayaratne Kariyawasam.

Madurai is the only Tamil Nadu city to feature in the global top 10, while Ahmedabad was ranked second and Nagpur fourth. Overall, 14 Indian cities featured among the 50 cities facing the highest heat risk.

Globally, Al Basrah in Iraq ranked as the city facing the highest heat risk, followed by Ahmedabad, Bamako, Nagpur, Quezon City, Baghdad, Madurai, Faisalabad, Lagos and Hyderabad in Pakistan. More than 95% of the highest-risk cities were concentrated in South and Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The analysis showed that some cities with only moderate heat exposure can still rank among the world’s riskiest because social and infrastructural vulnerabilities compound the danger. “Karachi, Faisalabad and Kaduna exemplify this pattern, with high scores in both vulnerability and lack of coping capacity. Contributing factors include high dependency ratios, low economic capacity, sparse urban vegetation, and limited access to cooling infrastructure,” wrote Radhika Khosla, associate professor at the University of Oxford and co-author of the study.

Conversely, cities such as Bangkok and Jeddah experience high heat exposure but rank lower in overall risk because stronger coping capacity helps offset some of the dangers associated with extreme temperatures.

The authors said heat-risk planning should move beyond temperature-focused approaches and explicitly address vulnerability and coping capacity through measures such as expanding urban greenery, improving access to affordable cooling and investing in resilient infrastructure. They also cautioned against excessive dependence on air-conditioning alone, recommending passive cooling measures and low-energy technologies such as fans and coolers as the first line of adaptation.