Extreme heat events overtax energy and water needs of cities, eventually comprising infrastructure and safety of homes, offices, and public facilities. Increased incidence of heat stroke, dehydration, cardiac stress and respiratory distress are commonly resulting health problems. These can be especially serious among elderly or juvenile populations. In July 1995, a heat wave in Chicago, US, caused 514 heat related deaths (12 per 100,000 population) and 3300 excess emergency admissions. Under severe enough conditions, evacuation to controlled environments can be the best means of ensuring the continued wellbeing of the population. However, the determination of optimal placement of evacuation facilities can be difficult. Facilities must be able to maintain energy and water supplies and sufficient, hygienically-maintained space for displaced persons. They must be able to manage incoming supplies of food and potable water despite the heat-related increase in the dangers of food spoilage. Further, the populations at greatest health risk from heat events are also those least able to travel long distances, requiring consideration of spatial demography for the area being served by the facility. Easy access to healthcare will also be of great importance, whether that should ultimately include planning for onsite care, or ensuring nearby access to hospitals capable of handling the increased patient load. Careful planning for the locations chosen for evacuation facilities may be critical of importance to ensuring minimal health impact during heat events. The research challenges in this area cut across disciplines, involving spatial demographic distribution of vulnerable populations, probabilistic mixed integer programming methods, and other aspects of "location theory". (While location theory is a classical subject in operations research and discrete mathematics, there are major new twists that interrelate choice of optimal location to predictions of duration, onset time, and severity of heat events that will require the expertise of remote sensors and climate change modelers.) The interdisciplinary group of faculty associated with CHRI is designed to address just these kinds of issues. (It should be noted that CDC is forming a Health Preparedness Mathematical Modeling initiative and one of its three start-up foci will be mathematical modeling of heat events.