Beyond heatwave vulnerability rankings: Sustainability dimensions and urban vulnerability profiles

Heat vulnerability indices are widely used to rank urban areas, yet they provide limited information about how heat vulnerability is embedded into urban sustainability or why similar aggregate scores may reflect different component configurations. This study examines whether different sustainability dimensions are associated with heatwave vulnerability and identifies associated urban profiles across 72 Hungarian urban units: the 23 districts of Budapest and the 49 largest cities. It combines long-term gridded climate data for 1971–2024 with recent demographic, socioeconomic, infrastructural, and land-cover indicators. Percentile normalization and equal weighting were used to construct sub-indices, followed by Spearman correlation, group comparison and Ward hierarchical cluster analysis. The results indicate that overall sustainability cannot serve as a direct proxy for heatwave vulnerability; moreover, they point out that economically stronger urban areas may combine high built-environment exposure with greater adaptive resources. Besides, Budapest districts had substantially higher exposure and vulnerability than other cities, while Ward clustering identified four exploratory urban profiles, indicating that comparable aggregate vulnerability levels may correspond to different configurations of climatic, structural and social conditions. The main contribution of the study is to integrate urban sustainability and heatwave vulnerability assessment beyond aggregate rankings by providing an analytical basis for local- and profile-specific adaptation interventions.