[PhD Defense] 🎓 Dr. Dyna ZITOUNI at ULiège & Université Mohamed Khider

On July 1, 2026, Dr. Dyna Chourouk Zitouni successfully defended her PhD at the University of Liège.

"Integrating Thermal Comfort and Heat Health Risk Assessment: Towards Adaptive Strategies for Mitigating Future Heat Wave Impacts."

As Europe experiences increasingly severe heatwaves and North African cities continue to warm rapidly, one question is becoming impossible to ignore:

Which neighborhoods are becoming dangerous to live in during extreme heat, and how can cities identify them before lives are at risk?

This doctoral research tackles that challenge by integrating urban climatology, thermal comfort, public health, remote sensing, GIS, and machine learning into a unified framework for mapping heat-related health risks across cities. Rather than viewing heat simply as a weather phenomenon, this research demonstrates that heat is fundamentally an urban planning challenge. The same air temperature can produce very different health risks depending on urban form, population vulnerability, vegetation, and the local microclimate. Using Algiers as a long-term case study, the research combines:

• Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) • Heat Health Risk Indicator (HHRI) • Local Climate Zones (LCZ) • Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI) analysis • Remote sensing and GIS • Machine learning clustering • Interactive decision-support dashboards

The work analyzes more than two decades of urban climate evolution (2001-2023) and reveals how heat risk is distributed across neighborhoods, identifying persistent hotspots where urban form and vulnerable populations combine to create the greatest health risks.

One of the most important contributions

Most cities still evaluate heat using temperature alone. This thesis demonstrates that temperature is only one part of the story. Real heat risk emerges from the interaction between:

• climatic hazard • urban morphology • exposure of people • social vulnerability

Only by integrating all four dimensions can cities prioritize adaptation investments where they are needed most.

From Algiers to Brussels

One particularly exciting aspect of this work is its transferability. The methodology developed for Algiers was also applied to Brussels, demonstrating that although Mediterranean and Northern European cities differ substantially, the same analytical framework can support heat resilience across very different climates. This sends an important message.

Heat resilience is no longer only a challenge for traditionally hot regions.

It is becoming a priority for every city facing climate change.

Scientific contributions

This research delivers:

• A coupled framework linking thermal comfort and heat-health risk assessment

• Long-term mapping of urban heat-health hotspots across Algiers

• Integration of Local Climate Zones with heat-health vulnerability

• Machine learning identification of urban heat-risk typologies

• A GIS-based Heat Health Risk Dashboard for planners and public authorities

• Demonstration of transferability from North Africa to Europe through the Brussels application

These advances move urban climate research beyond simply describing urban heat islands toward supporting evidence-based adaptation and public health planning.

Why this matters

The next generation of climate adaptation will not be measured only by lower carbon emissions. It will also be measured by how effectively cities protect their citizens during extreme heat. Future climate resilience requires bringing together architecture, urban planning, public health, artificial intelligence, and geospatial technologies. This thesis is an excellent example of that interdisciplinary vision. Congratulations to Dr. Dyna Chourouk Zitouni on this outstanding achievement.

Thank you to all jury members Noureddine Zemmouri, Tallal Abdel Karim Bouzir , Atef AHRIZ , Mario Cools. It has been a privilege to supervise this research and to witness its evolution into a rigorous and impactful contribution to urban climate adaptation.

My sincere appreciation also goes to co-supervisor Dr. Djihed Berkouk and Dr. Elhadi Matallah, the members of the doctoral jury, collaborators, and all colleagues who supported this journey.

Selected publications arising from the PhD

📖 Machine Learning-Driven Mapping of Heatwave Health Risks Across Local Climate Zones in a Mediterranean Context (2025) https://hdl.handle.net/2268/336924

📖 Advancing Heat Health Risk Assessment: Hotspot Identification of Heat Stress and Risk Across Municipalities in Algiers (2025) https://hdl.handle.net/2268/331170

📖 Dataset for Heat Health Risk and Thermal Comfort Assessment in Algiers (2001-2023). (2024) Harvard Dataverse. doi:10.7910/DVN/D9WGVN

📚 Download and read the dissertation: https://hdl.handle.net/2268/308013

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