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Operations & systems
Heat alerts eased heat-dispatch risk but demand still grew
Temporal Changes in the Association between Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature and Heat-Related Emergency Ambulance Dispatches across Japan: A Multi-Prefecture Time-Series Analysis Spanning the COVID-19 Pandemic and National Heatstroke Alert Implementation (2015–2023)
Environmental Health Perspectives · Added 10 November 2026
A Japanese multi-prefecture time-series analysis of 577,027 heat-related ambulance dispatches (2015–2023) found the association between wet-bulb globe temperature and dispatches attenuated by 44% after the pandemic and national heatstroke alerts, yet absolute heat-attributable demand still grew 18%.
- Study type
- Time-series
- Design
- Two-stage distributed lag nonlinear model time-series analysis across 47 prefectures
- Participants
- 577,027 heat-related ambulance dispatches, Japan 2015–2023
- Main finding
- At the 95th WBGT percentile the pooled cumulative relative risk fell from 10.45 (2015–19) to 5.90 (2022–23), a 43.6% reduction; severe-case relative risks also declined while age 65+ became the strongest effect modifier; heat-attributable counts still rose 18.1%
- Caveat
- Ecological time-series design — the attenuation can't be attributed to the heatstroke alert system specifically versus pandemic-era behaviour change
- Bottom line
- Hypothesis-generating
Why it matters in Australia (Medium relevance). Heat-driven ambulance demand peaks are an Australian summer reality, and the finding that public alerts softened relative risk without containing absolute workload speaks directly to summer deployment planning.
Learning goal
Understand how heat alert systems and changing community behaviour shape surging heat-related ambulance demand in Australia.
More
- Topic: Operations & systems
- Daily scan: 10 November 2026
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