NO-HEAT

Goals

This project aims to support multimodal transportation by making it safer and more comfortable for residents to walk and bike in their communities. We will work to improve heat resilience capacity and enhance climate justice by understanding how people adapt to extreme heat by changing their mobility and activity patterns. This will enable us to also explore variations in heat adaptation and exposure across different communities and contexts. Our goal will be to create open-source data and decision-support tools that can be used to identify high-risk areas and communities and enable planners and policy-makers to proactively plan for extreme heat mitigation.

Issues Involved or Addressed

Extreme heat, grimly referred to as “˜the silent killer,’ is the leading cause of weather-related fatalities in the United States. This is slowly being recognized as a major threat to human life. Hot weather conditions contribute to unhealthy air quality as well. We are witnessing a steady increase in extreme heat events and associated air pollution episodes, which are expected to continue to rise. Not only does extreme heat pose a risk to human life, it also threatens to stymie our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and manage congestion. Shifting trips away from private vehicles and toward alternative, cleaner modes of transportation can be a key mechanism to reduce emissions and congestion from passenger vehicles. However, during heatwaves, people walking and biking are most at risk due to high levels of heat exposure, owing to which many opt to travel by car (contributing to more GHG emissions and congestion) or forgo these trips (owing to unfulfilled mobility needs and, consequently, lower quality of life and well-being). Providing safe and accessible ways for residents to use multimodal transportation generates multiple co-benefits including access to employment and recreation, improved health outcomes, reduced GHG emissions from transportation, and increased transportation resilience in the event of an emergency.

Partners/Sponsors

Public agencies (municipalities, regional planning agencies, MPOs, transit agencies), private mobility data providers, community-based organizations