Extreme Heat — Policy Considerations and Actions To This Increasingly Common Weather Event
By: David Rowe
Last week, MetroLab hosted a webinar on what is becoming an increasingly salient issue for local governments: extreme heat. Patricia Solis, Executive Director, Knowledge Exchange for Resilience at Arizona State University (ASU); Amy St. Peter, Deputy Executive Director at the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG); and Grace Wickerson, Health Equity Policy Manager at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), joined our virtual convening to discuss how federal, state, and local governments are working to address the impact of extreme heat events.
Extreme heat events have become more frequent and intense across the entirety of the country. For instance, when MAG and ASU started looking at the issue in 2009, the State of Arizona had 35 heat-related deaths. By 2023, there were more than 600.
Tragic in the loss of human life itself, extreme heat not only puts a strain on a region’s health care system, but also on local economies and resource-constrained local governments. There is still a long way to go, but all levels of government are starting to think more proactively about how to address this increasingly devastating problem.
Local Interventions
MAG and ASU shared the incredible amount of work they have been doing through the MAG Heat Relief Network. The MAG Heat Relief Network provides heat relief resources to the residents of Maricopa County, including an online, interactive map that can filter for cooling centers, respite centers, hydration stations, and donation collection sites. The effort represents a decades-long collaborative effort to establish coordination between MAG, municipalities, non-profits, faith-based organizations, and businesses to plan and respond to heat-related events.
Additionally, ASU provides MAG and the Heat Relief Network with research and analytical capacity to inform what one panelist referred to as a “response to what is happening in the real world.” A majority of heat-related deaths are people over the age of 50. A majority are unhoused. A majority of indoor deaths occur in a home where air conditioning does not work. As was also stated during the panel: “It’s not just how hot it is during the day — it’s how hot does it remain at night?” This collaboration with ASU arms MAG and the Heat Relief Network with actionable research and insight to help planning and policymaking efforts.
Federal Considerations
The recently created National Integrated Heat Health Information System is building up resources for all levels of government. There are currently more than 20 federal agencies at the table, and they are beginning to assess how to bring heat considerations into their work. This conglomeration of federal agencies also collaborated to stand up the Heat.gov website.
Policy Considerations
- Apply a “heat lens” to every investment. At the local level, take a look at prevention. Much of the work has been focused on intervention, but what if we used cool pavement for transportation? What if we considered building codes and heat-resilient materials? What about strategic transit and bus shelters?
- Housing and energy policies are critical. Heat can be mediated by exposure to it. The most vulnerable people are ones without shelter. But, shelter aside, what happens during a widespread blackout?
- Lessons learned from the pandemic. For all levels of government, how can we leverage those lessons to streamline processes and resource delivery?
- Workforce capacity issues. How do we build up a workforce to address things like a local bottleneck for capacity to retrofit homes? How do we make sure we have adequate local emergency room staff?
- There are not enough resources available for folks who cannot pay. Existing low-energy assistance programs were built for climates we no longer have — we need smart climate formulas to determine what sorts of financial solutions work in different climate zones.
- Current funding levels for existing local heat programs are unsustainable. Many communities are using ARPA funding to take on the issue of heat — that funding goes away in two years.
What could be done today?
- Categorize data that clearly defines heat related deaths.
- There is no real time data on heat. This cannot start soon enough.
- Look at the resources you have on hand. Reach out to partners more likely to be impacted, utilizing efforts in a way they can sustain and provide. Help your neighbors!
- Use data to open up incident response centers pre-disaster.
- Aggregate heat-related damages. There are boundless amounts of heat-related damages, but it is nearly impossible to get a fine point on how costly heat events actually are. Different governmental organizations account for heat differently, and there is no succinct way to aggregate for a heat event’s actual damage to a community.
Outlook
While extreme heat remains an uphill battle for all levels of government, the efforts of federal, state, and local governments are trending up to address the issue. Our panelists expressed that they are having more and better collaborative conversations than ever before, and that there is an increased level of awareness and enthusiasm from the federal government about what is happening in local communities.
MetroLab agrees with the sentiment of urgency with respect to Extreme Heat. We hosted this webinar with the goal of starting a conversation within our community. How do we galvanize the local government and university community to come together and better equip communities ahead of these incredibly impactful weather events? We hope you’ll help us as we will continue hosting conversations on this topic. If you have any questions, or research you would like to disseminate to the MetroLab ecosystem, email us at info@metrolabnetwork.org.
