World’s First Municipal ‘Heat Officers’ Combat Extreme Heat

“About a fifth of the most populated cities in the world could warm by more than 4°C by 2050,” writes Michaela Haas in Next City. In the United States, an estimated 12,000 people die each year from heat-related causes. Haas profiles two of the nation’s first ‘heat officers,’ Marta Segura in Los Angeles and Jane Gilbert in Miami-Dade County, who are tasked with developing strategies for cooling their cities and reducing the impact of extreme heat.

To address the urgency of the threat quickly, Segura is working on some ‘low-hanging fruit’ policies that can make an immediate difference, such as “a campaign to educate Angelenos about the risks and first signs of heat-related illnesses; air conditioning units for underserved communities; and a ‘cooling network’ of shops, department stores and fast-food chains at which people can come in and cool down, ‘so that everybody who starts feeling overheated on their way to the bus stop knows: I can get a glass of cool water here and sit down in a cooled space to recover at no cost.’”

In Miami, Gilbert plans to increase tree canopy in the city’s most vulnerable areas and supporting homeowners and renters in retrofitting their homes and purchasing efficient cooling systems. Miami and Los Angeles have also banded together with 23 other cities in the “cool roadways partnership” to negotiate lower prices for cooling roadway materials.

To help cities mitigate the impacts of heat, the C40 Cool Cities Network has created an ‘urban cooling toolbox’ that addresses “Green infrastructure (such as trees, green roofs, permeable pavements), blue infrastructure (drinking fountains, public swimming pools and other forms of water cooling), gray infrastructure (cool roofs, cool pavements, passive cooling in buildings), communication (outreach, cooling centers and campaigns), policy (climate design guidelines, heat emergency response plans, cooling tax rebate programs) and urban development (urban geometry, building materials).”