Ladd Keith, Ph.D.

Tag: urban heat island

  • 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

  • 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).

  • Come Rain or Shine Podcast: Extreme Heat and Urban Planning

    Come Rain or Shine Podcast: Extreme Heat and Urban Planning

    I joined Dave Hondula, Ph.D., Associate Professor at Arizona State University and Lisa LaRocque, Sustainability Officer at the City of Las Cruces, New Mexico, for a discussion on extreme heat and urban planning on the Come Rain or Shine Podcast. We discussed the urban heat island effect, how cities across the U.S. and in the Southwest are mitigating heat, and areas of hope in how we can better plan for heat.

    Listen to the full episode here.

  • American Planning Association: Urban Heat Resilience

    American Planning Association: Urban Heat Resilience

    I’m happy to share the American Planning Association (APA)’s Planning Advisory Service (PAS) QuickNotes #95 on Urban Heat Resilience written by myself and Sara Meerow is now available! In this PAS QuickNotes we explain trends in increasing extreme heat risk, describe the concept of heat resilience, and provide an overview of heat mitigation and management strategies that communities can implement. This PAS QuickNotes serves as an introduction to the topic of urban heat resilience, which will be covered more fully in PAS Report: Planning for Urban Heat Resilience, to be published in the spring of 2022.

    APA Members can download the PAS QuickNotes on Urban Heat Resilience for free, and it is available to non-members for $10.

  • Planning for extreme heat: A review

    Check out my new open access literature review paper with Sara Meerow and Tess Wagner, where we present the current state of planning for extreme heat, find many papers focused on mapping and modeling heat but far less on urban planning and governance, and discuss challenges and opportunities in research and practice!

    Abstract

    Extreme heat is a growing concern for cities, with both climate change and the urban heat island (UHI) effect increasingly impacting public health, economies, urban infrastructure, and urban ecology. To better understand the current state of planning for extreme heat, we conducted a systematic literature review. We found that most of the research focuses on UHI mapping and modeling, while few studies delve into extreme heat planning and governance processes. An in-depth review of this literature reveals common institutional, policy, and informational barriers and strategies for overcoming them. Identified challenges include siloed heat governance and research that limit cross-governmental and interdisciplinary collaboration; complex, context-specific, and diverse heat resilience strategies; the need to combine extreme heat “risk management” strategies (focused on preparing and responding to extreme heat events) and “design of the built environment” strategies (spatial planning and design interventions that intentionally reduce urban temperatures); and the need for extensive, multidisciplinary data and tools that are often not readily available. These challenges point to several avenues for future heat planning research. Ultimately, we argue that planners have an important role to play in building heat resilience and conclude by identifying areas where scholars and practitioners can work together to advance our understanding of extreme heat planning.

    Citation

    Keith, Ladd, Sara Meerow, and Tess Wagner. 2020. Planning for extreme heat: A review. Journal of Extreme Events. 6(3&4), 2050003.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S2345737620500037