A new report from the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo is highlighting the importance of using our built environments to reduce risks related to extreme heat events.
The report, Irreversible Extreme Heat: Protecting Canadians and Communities from a Lethal Future, argues that urban centres, as “hot spots of global warming,” will experience the worst of climbing temperatures in Canada and therefore need to take immediate action to reduce the dangers of extreme heat.
“Canada is warming, on average, at twice the global rate” say the authors, a phenomenon magnified by the heat-island effects urban environments create. The report authors identify low-lying urban areas in B.C., the southern prairies, southern Ontario and Quebec as being particularly at risk.
Extreme heat has devastating effects on everything from human health (as we witnessed in western Canada in 2021) to infrastructure and economies.
Practical Strategies for Building Resilience
The report outlines a series of actions that individuals, property owners and managers and communities can take to mitigate extreme heat events. Actions are categorized under behavioural changes, green infrastructure and grey (built) infrastructure.
While many of the actions recommended in the report are intuitive at this point (they recommend increasing insulation, installing shading features like awnings and choosing windows that reduce heat gain), the report also suggests a more evolved approach to urban infrastructure as a whole.
Introducing or expanding green spaces is a key strategy for cooling cities, say the authors. They recommend reducing artificial surfaces across cities—from individual balconies to parking lots to rooftops and building facades—and replacing it with vegetation.
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“Trees and vegetation may also be planted and maintained in strategic green or ‘cooling’ corridors, including along urban river valleys,” they suggest. Urban forests, ecological corridors, green alleyways and wetland restoration are all important projects that they argue should form a “strategic component of public infrastructure.”
Strategies for grey infrastructure focus on heat-resilient building design, including the installation of cool roofs and surfaces and passive cooling.
They stress that vulnerable populations such as marginalized, racialized and low-income communities, as well as people experiencing homelessness, will typically have fewer ways to protect themselves. Any community strategy, they suggest, should be seen as an opportunity to support those who have fewer resources to mobilize on their own behalf.
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