This 3-part Masterclass includes a rapid review of what’s known about urban heat islands, and provide insights into considerations for choosing interventions to manage them.


Participants learned about the Urban Heat Island effect Tool tip The UHI effect is caused by cities replacing the heat buffering ecosystem services afforded by soil and vegetative evapotranspiration with heat-absorbing materials, wind-blocking & radiation trapping structures, and waste-heat from air conditioning, automobiles, and other sources. In some cases, this effect can drive temperature differentials of 10 degrees Celsius – from the urban core to the exurban periphery, but also within urban areas from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. – what causes it, how we map and model it, and what we can do about it. 

This masterclass series is complementary to the NASA ARSET Training: Satellite Remote Sensing for Urban Heat Islands, which ran in November 2020, and for which course materials are available online.

Target Audiences: Interested experts may include urban planners, designers, architects, sustainability/resilience officers, city government officials, urban climate scientists and other researchers.

Part 1: Understanding Urban Heat: Urban Climate Science Background

Part 2: Building Capacity and Awareness: Community Engagement & Empowerment

Part 3: Managing Urban Heat: Interventions and Evaluation

 

Part 1: Understanding Urban Climate and the Heat Island Effect

Session recordings

Learning objectives: To understand...

  • the essential elements of urban climatology for understanding the UHI effect
  • the different types of urban heat islands and their spatio-temporal characteristics
  • the most common observation and modeling approaches
  • the basics elements and nature of outdoor thermal comfort
  • the various metrics used to quantify outdoor thermal comfort
  • how climate-sensitive design can improve outdoor thermal comfort

 

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Part 2: Managing Heat Islands: Community Engagement & Environmental Justice

Session recordings

Learning objectives

  • Understand the multiple, complex impacts of urban heat islands on communities as well as the distribution of those impacts (EJ, air quality, etc.)
  • Discuss why outreach and engagement are important for issues such as this?
  • Learn how vulnerable communities can be meaningfully engaged, common challenges, and how they can be overcome.
  • Walk through two case studies of building community engagement through community science.

 

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Part 3: Taking Action: Where to intervene, what's most effective, and how we know

Session recordings

Learning Objectives

  • Understand how health outcomes serve as a indicator of heat vulnerability
  • Understand how land cover choices can measurably impact heat outcomes including temperature, humidity, air mass types, and heat-related illness and death
  • Understand how interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral partnerships can bridge research to practice
  • Understand how to identify specific desired outcomes, quantitative targets, and an evaluation approach for implementing UHI reduction strategies. (mitigating the hazard vs direct and indirect health impacts)
  • Review examples of interventions available to manage heat risk 
  • Explore effectiveness of interventions for specific settings, and discuss how one might assess their return on the investment.

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