HomoTherm: An Open-Source Approach to Modelling Heat Exchange in Humans and Other Hominins in Diverse Environments

Abstract

Climate change is increasing human exposure to novel environments and generating serious practical challenges in human health, while the role of past climates in shaping hominin evolution remains a fascination. Models of human heat exchange vary from simple environmental indices to extremely detailed physiological calculations. Physiologically explicit models vary in their physical explicitness, and significant trade-offs exist between model realism and computational speed. We presently lack agile models that are not so over-parameterised that they are slow, that maintain generality across diverse and complex physical environments, and that have sufficient biological realism to capture human..