By Jeff Young
Environment and Sustainability Editor
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As our planet warms due to climate change, many of the world's cities will likely experience even greater heat than the surrounding countryside. Pavement, buildings and concrete absorb and hold more heat than fields and forests do, and cities can be as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the greener surroundings on a given summer day, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
This phenomenon, known as the urban heat island, makes city dwellers especially vulnerable to extreme heat waves that are more frequent, severe and prolonged because of climate change. And with demographic projections showing nearly 70 percent of humanity living in cities by mid-century, the search for ways to reduce the heat island effect is urgent.
The data analytics and artificial intelligence company Straive has used AI to develop a visualization tool that shows how rising temperatures impact a city and which can also help planners and officials identify ways to make buildings and infrastructure more resilient to rising temperatures.
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"The idea was, how can we empower authorities to have a tool so they can predict how urban heat islands might change in the future?" Aditya Bhardwaj, client partner at Gramener, a company Straive acquired in 2023, told Newsweek.
His partner on the project, Sumedh Ghatage, a senior manager of data analytics and AI at Gramener, said the team first looked to imagery from satellites such as Landsat that have specialized sensors that detect the surface temperature of objects like buildings.
"If I touch a bare building when it is hot on, let's say, a summer afternoon, I will feel more heat" than the air temperature would show, Ghatage said. "So, it's more about the skin temperature of the object, which is creating a lot of heat in that particular area."
The team then built on that detailed heat map of a city to add other data layers about socioeconomics to better understand how different communities would experience heat, Bhardwaj explained. Lower-income residents might have less access to air conditioning, for example, and young children and people over 60 are more likely to suffer health impacts from heat.
"We've combined all of these to develop a vulnerability heat index, which tells you within the city or within your area of interest what are the areas which are most vulnerable based on the combination of all these factors," Bhardwaj said.
Straive's work has earned them a place among the winners of Newsweek's inaugural AI Impact Awards. The awards celebrate organizations that are driving exceptional impact through the strategic and ethical use of AI technologies.
The 38 award winners in more than a dozen categories come from various industries; entries were judged by a panel of subject matter and AI experts. Winners have also been invited to Newsweek's AI Impact Summit, running from June 23 through 25 in Sonoma, California, for three days of conversations and presentations on ground-breaking deployment of AI.
Straive's urban island heat maps and vulnerability index have first been put to use in Canada. The company teamed up with Canadian nonprofit group Evergreen to develop the visualization tools for cities there.
"Even though everyone thinks Canada has a very cold climate, a lot of the communities are not well equipped [to cope] with rising temperatures," Bhardwaj said.
Many cities in northern regions of the world often have fewer housing units with air conditioning and less public infrastructure and adaptive measures to deal with periods of extreme heat.
In 2021, Vancouver officials reported dozens of deaths related to a summer heat wave, and climate data for several Canadian cities show sharp increases in the number of summer days that stay hot through the night, a major contributor to heat-related illnesses.
Bhardwaj and Ghatage said that with the tool, city officials can not only see current areas of heat vulnerability, but they can also test the effects that changes in the city might have.
If a new building project would reduce vegetation and tree cover, or a tree-planting campaign were to increase it, planners would want to know how the changes in shade affect heat.
"How would heat island effect temperatures look in a part of the city three or four years from now?" Bhardwaj said. "The tool allows you to do those kinds of predictions."
The types and colors of pavement, roofing and building materials also make a difference. The team found that corrugated plastic roofing material can trap a lot of heat, while rooftops painted white reflect heat and help keep buildings cooler.
However, they discovered that some white rooftops don't stay white, something that might not be well understood without the detailed satellite view.
"We observe that lot of buildings, due to the age of the buildings, have turned grayish or reddish," Ghatage said. "In those specific areas, the urban heat island surface temperature is quite higher."
The AI tool brings all this information that would otherwise be hard to collect to a city planner's fingertips, a vivid example of AI's power to help cities adapt to climate change.
"It's not a silver bullet," Bhardwaj said of AI. "But I think it is a useful tool that can help us solve challenges."
To see the full list of AI Impact winners, visit the official page for Newsweek's AI Impact Awards.
Newsweek will continue the conversation on meaningful AI innovations at our AI Impact Summit from June 23 to 25 in Sonoma, California. Click here for more information and to register for the event.
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