LAUSR

Increasing extreme heat events have threatened human health seriously in the context of global climate change. As an important policy tool to resist heat-related risks, growing attentions have been paid on heat risk mapping researches in recent years. Unfortunately, the uncertainties caused by the subjective choice of data transforming method remain unclear. This study compared four data transforming methods and investigated the impacts of data transforming method selection on the outputs of heat risk assessment and mapping. The results indicated that the choice of data transforming methods will greatly affect the stability of heat risk mapping outputs and is likely to mislead decision makers. Only 4.56% of the counties that their heat risk levels derived from four data transforming methods remain consistent. The stability of heat risk mapping output was highly relevant to the population density. Regions with higher population density usually have lower stability for its mapping results. The "Number" method and the "Total PD" method are recommended for their satisfactory validation accuracy and unambiguous policy orientation; while the "Proportion" method is not recommended for its poor validation accuracy and vague policy guiding.