2024 Reports

Frameworks for Heat Mitigation Planning in Louisville, Kentucky

Mallen, Evan

Extreme heat is an increasing threat to public health in urban areas, with elevated temperatures from urban heat islands and a warming climate. To mitigate these rising temperatures, urban planners are beginning to use decision support tools to test the effectiveness of heat mitigation policies and their public health benefits. The city of Louisville, Kentucky, USA, pursued one of the first heat mitigation plans in the USA in collaboration with the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Urban Climate Lab to explore the cooling benefits of green infrastructure, cool materials, and waste heat-related strategies. Resulting from this work is an adaptable modeling framework for heat mitigation planning that can be used in cities across the world. Implementing such heat mitigation strategies can help cities both adapt to warming temperatures in a changing climate, as well as mitigate climate change through co-benefits of reduced energy consumption for cooling and carbon sequestration through expanded tree planting initiatives.