Heat resilience: Measuring benefits of urban heat adaptation

Urban Heat Islands are an unintended consequence of our increasing urbanisation. With global temperatures projected to increase in the coming years – addressing Urban heat becomes increasingly important. Ramboll has helped C40 Cities setup and test a tool that measures the benefits from urban heat adaption initiatives.

In order to take the best and most effectful actions, you must have available relevant and actionable informations. Ramboll Director, Henrik Stener Pedersen explains:

- Our aim developing this tool is to provide decision-makers with a first-step assessment on what health benefits – and ultimately economic benefits, urban heat adaptation options could provide the city with. Usign this tool we hope to support well-informed city investments that not only address the urban heat issues, but also acts to improve urban liveability overall.

Cities can use this information to make the case for urban heat adaptation investments, and to prioritise the actions that are likely to have the most positive impact locally.

Users can calculate the benefits brought by specific parks and green infrastructure, water bodies such as rivers and lakes, and cool and vegetative surfaces. The tool can also extrapolate results from these specific investments to calculate the benefits of scaling-up across the whole of the city.

Access the Heat Resilient Cities benefits tool and calculate benefits for your city’s actions here:

Instructions for using the tool are given in the first two tabs (Intro and Workflow) of the Excel file.

The tool was developed with guidance from cities which participate in the C40 Cool Cities Network, and from urban heat and health impact specialists. It has been piloted with the cities of Medellín and São Paulo.

In Medellín the city has invested in more than 30 green corridors – adding more than 880.000 new trees, 2.5 million smaller plants to the urban areas. These green corridors are approximately 4.5˚C cooler than their surroundings and research shows that temperatures across Medellín is now 2 ˚C lower than before the project began.

In 2019 a host of bright talents from around the globe joined the Urban Lab in Copenhagen. Their goal was to co-create solutiones that could mitigate the same challenges as the C40 tool adresses.

At your convenience you can download the case studies from both cities on page. And you can take a deep dive in to the methodology used to design the tool.