Using satellite data to place water where Mumbai's street animals need it most.
Mumbai's urban heat island effect makes some neighbourhoods far hotter than others, and street animals have the fewest defences against it. Most have no guaranteed access to shade, water, or cooling, leaving them highly vulnerable to heat stress. Heat stroke in dogs carries reported mortality rates of up to 50%.
Today, water bowls are placed mostly through informal effort, based on where volunteers happen to be rather than where the need is greatest. With over 90,000 stray dogs and countless other street animals across the city, a data-driven approach is essential to direct limited help to the highest-risk areas.
This project combines satellite-derived land surface temperature, ward boundaries, and geographic safety constraints to pinpoint where street animals are most likely to suffer heat stress. It then recommends practical, safe locations for water bowls and other heat-relief measures, presented as an interactive map so volunteers and organisations can see priority areas at a glance and act on them.
Satellite land-surface temperature reveals which areas run hottest across each ward.
Spots near railways, highways and water bodies are excluded to keep animals safe.
The hottest safe locations are ranked as priority spots for water bowls.
Red areas are hotter than the local average, where risk is highest. Blue markers are recommended water-bowl spots. Use the slider to match the number of bowls to your resources.
I'm Rihaan Sodhani, a 16-year-old student at Dhirubhai Ambani International School, Mumbai. I've been involved in animal welfare since 2018, feeding, rescuing, and fostering strays, and I've adopted five rescued cats along the way. I volunteer with World For All (WFA), where I helped set up a centre housing 45 dogs in Karjat.
Alongside animal welfare, I'm interested in engineering and environmental science; my past work has explored low-cost albedometer design and heat-stress mitigation formulations. This project is my most recent effort to build practical, evidence-based solutions for the welfare of Mumbai's street animals.