How Extreme Heat Drives Inter-Agency Collaboration

During a webinar led by The Climate Center, government officials and experts weighed in on how cities and municipal ‘heat officers’ must coordinate across agencies to address the risks of extreme heat. Ysabelle Kempe outlines some key points in Smart Cities Dive.

Kempe points to a recent Los Angeles project, a small shade structure installed at city bus stops that became the target of heavy criticism from people who saw it as ineffective and wasteful. “[I]ts designers and the city defended it as an experimental effort to work around the coordination, years of planning and hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to install even modest infrastructure projects.”

Los Angeles chief heat officer Marta Segura acknowledged the difficulties, saying, “From the outset, a big part of this work has been un-siloing, coordinating and collaborating, and building plans with other departments.”

According to Braden Kay, manager of California’s Extreme Heat and Community Resilience Program, “Local governments that don’t have a role dedicated to extreme heat response can turn to community planners, civil engineers, public works professionals, emergency managers and public health officials.”