Ladd Keith, Ph.D.

Tag: Sara Meerow

  • Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™ for Heat

    Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™ for Heat

    Excited to share our new Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™ for Heat guidebook, by myself, Sara Meerow, Phil Berke, and Joseph DeAngelis, AICP and our students including Lauren Jensen, Shaylynn Trego, Erika Schmidt, and Stephanie Smith. PIRS™ for Heat provides an integrated planning approach that coordinates strategies across community plans and uses the best available heat risk information to prioritize heat mitigation strategies for the most vulnerable communities.

    Our guidebook provides a step-by-step walkthrough of how to conduct the PIRS™ for Heat approach, as well as case studies with results from our partner communities of Baltimore, Boston, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, and Seattle. For instance, our PIRS™ for Heat results indicate that Boston’s heat mitigation policies are targeting hotter areas and more socially vulnerable communities for heat mitigation. Interestingly though, these two areas are not necessarily co-located.

    PIRS™ for Heat results for Boston, MA, including the net score (left), urban heat (middle), and social vulnerability (right).

    Our approach was developed as an extension of the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™ developed first by Phil Berke and colleagues and originally applied to flooding hazards. The PIRS™ for Heat guidebook was funded by and is freely available thanks to the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration Extreme Heat Initiative and a partnership with American Planning Association.

    Download the PIRS™ for Heat guidebook and worksheet

  • Won the APA-AZ Applied Research Award

    Sara Meerow and I after being presented with the award.

    Excited to share that Sara Meerow and I won the American Planning Association, Arizona Chapter’s Open Category (Applied Research) award for Planning for Urban Heat Resilience (APA PAS Report #600). Our report draws from our collaborative research on heat including literature reviews, a national survey, interviews, and planning case studies, and provides an overview of climate change and the urban heat island effect, the inequitable impacts of heat, and heat information sources. We provide an urban heat resilience planning framework for communities and outline numerous heat mitigation and management strategies.

    The report is available as a free download thanks to a grant from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

  • Planning for Urban Heat Resilience

    Planning for Urban Heat Resilience

    I am thrilled to share that Planning Advisory Service (PAS) Report 600: Planning for Urban Heat Resilience has been published by the American Planning Association! My co-author, Sara Meerow, and I argue that the planning profession has a critical role to play in equitably addressing increasing heat risk and lay out the steps communities can take to either start heat planning or improve their current efforts.

    An excerpt from our Executive Summary:

    Heat poses a growing and inequitable threat. Cities around the world must plan now to increase urban heat resilience in the face of climate change and the UHI effect. Planners are well positioned to use existing regulatory tools and plans to mitigate the inequitably distributed risk associated with the UHI effect, reduce greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change, and help prepare for extreme heat events. This PAS Report equips planners with the background knowledge, planning framework, and catalog of comprehensive approaches to heat mitigation and management they need to work effectively with colleagues across agencies and sectors and advance urban heat resilience in their communities.

    (Keith and Meerow, 2022 page 8)

    Our guidebook draws from the latest research on extreme heat and heat planning and includes practical examples and case studies that show how communities across the United States are planning for heat. It is an honor to have written APA’s first-ever comprehensive guidance on heat planning with Sara and we hope that planners, allied professionals, and community members find it a helpful resource.

    Planning for Urban Heat Resilience is available as a free download thanks to a grant from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

  • Planning for Extreme Heat: A National Survey of U.S. Planners

    Planning for Extreme Heat: A National Survey of U.S. Planners

    Excited to share my latest co-authored paper with Sara Meerow, Planning for Extreme Heat: A National Survey of U.S. Planners, published in the Journal of the American Planning Association. In this paper, we discuss heat planning efforts, including heat mitigation and heat management, and share results from a survey of U.S. planners on extreme heat. We explore heat risk perceptions, impacts, strategies, plans, information needs, and barriers.

    Abstract

    Extreme heat is the deadliest climate hazard in the United States. Climate change and the urban heat island effect are increasing the number of dangerously hot days in cities worldwide and the need for communities to plan for extreme heat. Existing literature on heat planning focuses on heat island mapping and modeling, whereas few studies delve into heat planning and governance processes. We surveyed planning professionals from diverse cities across the United States to establish critical baseline information for a growing area of planning practice and scholarship that future research can build on. Survey results show that planners are concerned with extreme heat risks, particularly environmental and public health impacts from climate change. Planners already report impacts from extreme heat, particularly to energy and water use, vegetation and wildlife, public health, and quality of life. Especially in affected communities, planners claim they address heat in plans and implement heat mitigation and management strategies such as urban forestry, emergency response, and weatherization, but perceive many barriers related to human and financial resources and political will.

    The paper is online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2021.1977682

  • Nature: Deploy heat officers, policies and metrics

    I am thrilled to have a new Comment piece on heat governance, Deploy heat officers, policies and metrics, published in Nature with coauthors Sara Meerow, David M. Hondula, V. Kelly Turner, and James C. Arnott.

    “Heat is an outlier hazard — invisible, frequently chronic and subtly pervasive. Unlike for flooding or wildfire, no single organization or department is responsible for coordinating responses for extreme heat.”

    In the piece, we call for researchers and decision-makers to:

    • Advance heat equity that address systematic racial and income disparities,
    • Mitigate heat in the built environment,
    • Manage both chronic and acute heat risk,
    • Coordinate local initiatives and integrate planning efforts,
    • Develop and use consistent metrics to measure progress, and
    • Build national institutions to support local efforts.

    More information: