Heatwave-Induced Excess Mortality Estimates for India's Districts

District-level estimates of heatwave-induced excess mortality across India. The dataset, authored by Piyush Narang and last updated in May 2026, applies a climate zone-based risk transfer methodology to publicly available data. It estimates approximately 3,400 excess deaths from a single day of extreme heat and nearly 30,000 from a five-day heatwave nationally.

Use Cases

• Mapping high-risk districts for heat-related mortality based on climate zone classifications.
• Estimating national and state-level excess death burdens from heatwaves based on district-level projections.
• Informing the development of localized early-warning systems based on spatial mortality risk patterns.

Strengths

• Provides district-level estimates for all of India, a granularity not previously reported in peer-reviewed literature.
• Estimates approximately 8,100 excess deaths for Uttar Pradesh during a five-day heatwave.
• Uses publicly available data from India's Civil Registration System and population projections for 2024.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The description notes estimates are conservative lower bounds and that applying urban-derived risk coefficients to rural populations introduces uncertain bias.

Provenance

Source

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Collection Method

Adapts findings from a multi-city epidemiological analysis using a climate zone-based risk transfer methodology.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-26 06:02:04; freshness should be verified.

Geography

India, at the district level.