The Challenge
Extreme heat kills more people per year than any other climate disaster and negatively affects nearly every human activity and society worldwide. The magnitude of the danger cannot be overstated and the number of people exposed to extreme heat only rises as greenhouse gas emissions continue and the world urbanizes.
Over 1 billion
people lack access to basic cooling measures.
OUR APPROACH
Arsht-Rock builds resilience to extreme heat with the following strategies:
- Targeted communications, warning systems, and actionable strategies: Arsht-Rock develops tools that cities and other jurisdictions can use to clearly and evocatively message the risks and solutions of extreme heat to their populations and engage stakeholders, including categorizing and naming heat waves.
- Mobilize global experts, public leaders, and stakeholders in the Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance (EHRA) to accelerate implementation: Arsht-Rock connects EHRA and local, regional, and national leaders to co-create policies and implement projects which help people become more heat resilient, with a focus on vulnerable communities.
- Build the evidence base for action: Arsht-Rock and EHRA work with global experts to quantify the economic and social consequences of extreme heat to cities and other jurisdictions, informing and inspiring leaders to act. We partnered with Vivid Economics to assess the impacts of heat on specific sectors and segments of the population, catalyzing policy and investment that reduces the risks and costs resulting from the effects of heat.
- Create the conditions that bring heat resilience solutions to scale: Arsht-Rock and its partners are developing the tools, evaluation methods, and finance and insurance approaches that make heat resilience solutions implementable at a global scale.
Resilience in action
Explore our resilience solutions to learn about how Arsht Rock builds resilience to extreme heat
Heat Action Platform
The Heat Action Platform is a living, engagement-oriented tool for city officials, practitioners, and financial institutions to find guidance, both existing resources and tailor-made solutions, on reducing the human and economic impacts of extreme heat at the regional or municipal level. The platform offers opportunities to engage with world-leading experts across a diversity of disciplines to plan, fund, implement, and measure heat resilience actions.
Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance (EHRA)
We created the Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance (EHRA) in 2020 to deepen, expand, and accelerate action, aiming to deliver heat resilient solutions to 500 million people worldwide by 2030. Comprised of over 40 experts in public health, finance, humanitarian assistance, disaster management, climate science and risk, insurance, public infrastructure, engineering, and design, as well as city leaders, EHRA co-develops and delivers heat resilience solutions to the world’s cities.
Categorizing and naming heat waves
Arsht-Rock is developing and piloting a method to categorize heat waves based on their human impact. This will enable local authorities to better communicate heat risk, increase the flexibility of their emergency response, and highlight the human and infrastructure damage caused by heat waves.
Quantifying the economic and social consequences of extreme heat
Arsht-Rock works with Vivid Economics to calculate and communicate the impacts of extreme heat on cities, states, and national jurisdictions in dimensions such as worker productivity losses and mortality, and key sectors of local economies such as tourism. This analysis is paired with modeled and real solutions to assess the potential for reducing human and economic impacts.
Heat Season
In 2021, Arsht-Rock launched a public campaign for cities to announce the start of dangerous hot weather (#HeatSeason), similar to how hurricanes and other natural disasters are communicated. The Heat Season campaign includes public communications and educational graphics for social media that highlight the risk of heat and how people can stay safe during heat waves.
Chief Heat Officers
Arsht-Rock works with its core partner cities and organizations to unify the response to heat by appointing Chief Heat Officers, local officials focused on the risks and impacts of heat on their city residents. Chief Heat Officers in Miami-Dade County, USA, Athens, Greece, and Freetown, Sierra Leone lead the development and implementation of heat resilience policies and programs that meet the unique needs of their community.
Why we work on extreme heat
