Through a peer-review process, NOAA’s Climate Program Office (CPO) selected thirteen community partners in cities across the U.S. to receive funding support to perform a community science urban heat island (UHI) mapping campaign this summer. Successful applicants showed an urgent need for the mapping campaigns to help them understand and mitigate their exposure to extreme heat, identified strong local partnerships, and mapped out applications for the data and newly developed community capacity in advance.
CAPA Strategies and the NOAA CPO held an initial onboarding call with recipients early this week to begin the planning process. A recording of the call can be accessed here. We will follow-up with campaign cities soon to confirm budgets and contracts and provide additional information.
Early goal-setting for participating cities includes vulnerability and equity analyses incorporating heat data; identifying green building and infrastructure interventions to ameliorate heat, particularly in low-income neighborhoods; informational campaigns; network building; and more. You can access our previous article on campaign goal setting here.
This program flowchart summarizes the entire sequence of steps taken by each local campaign.
Joey Williams, Heat Watch Program Manager will be on point to answer questions about 2020 campaign logistics and methodology. CAPA will send recipients an introductory email to help them tailor a campaign specific to their needs, then follow up with a Scope of Work and Starter Kit to help them get their campaigns going. Next steps for campaign organizers will include volunteer recruitment and training. General information can be found on CAPA’s website.
Meanwhile, the National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) is working to develop operational campaign support in the form of weather and climate predictions, engaging local Weather Forecast Offices, issuing the Heat Beat Newsletter for regular campaign updates, and updating the NIHHIS Portal to share information about this year’s and previous years’ campaigns.
Addressing concerns about COVID-19: We understand that the coronavirus and related restrictions on group activities are on everyone’s minds. The NIHHIS-CAPA team is actively tracking the national and local responses to this pandemic to ensure we comply with personal distancing guidelines and other policies. CAPA Strategies has developed plans to run campaigns with minimal person-to-person interaction by shipping sterilized monitoring equipment to host organizations engaging in online orientation and training sessions with campaign teams and their volunteers, and providing guidance for pick up/drop off that maintains best public health practices. Though we cannot predict how social restrictions will unfold this summer, we are cautiously optimistic that our scientific pursuits can continue safely. You can read the full CAPA/NIHHIS statement on COVID-19 safety and Heat Campaigns here.