The impact of extreme temperatures on health and wellbeing is rising up policy agendas in many cities. The Excel-based Heat Resilient Cities benefits tool has been designed to help city planners and decision-makers to quantify the health, economic and environmental benefits of common urban heat adaptation actions. Cities can use this information to make the case for urban heat adaptation investments, and to prioritise the actions that are likely to have the most positive impact locally.

Users can calculate the benefits brought by specific parks and green infrastructure, water bodies such as rivers and lakes, and cool and vegetative surfaces. The tool can also extrapolate results from these specific investments to calculate the benefits of scaling-up across the whole of the city.

The tool was developed with guidance from cities which participate in the C40 Cool Cities Network, and from urban heat and health impact specialists. It has been piloted with the cities of Medellín and São Paulo – read below for a flavour of the results for both cities, or the case studies for full details.

Access the Heat Resilient Cities benefits tool and calculate benefits for your city’s actions via the Download button on this page. The tool will also soon be available here in Spanish. Instructions for using the tool are given in the first two tabs (Intro and Workflow) of the Excel file. Contact Neuni Farhad and Snigdha Garg with any questions about how to use the tool and interpret the results. You can also learn how the tool was developed in the methodology note.