Explanation
This ordinance authorizes and directs the Director of Public Utilities to accept a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) project for the urban heat island mapping. The National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS), in partnership with Climate Adaptation Planning and Analytics (CAPA) Strategies, is providing these projects to organizations interested in cohort of NIHHIS-CAPA Urban Heat Island mapping campaigns. The campaign areas would include the City of Columbus, Ohio as well as Opportunity Zones and Control Zones within Franklin County.
These community science field campaigns are an excellent opportunity to raise awareness about the many impacts of extreme heat and the factors that may affect the uneven distribution of heat throughout a community. It is also an opportunity to teach and educate individuals about how scientific field campaigns are conducted, consists of volunteers learning about urban heat in a training session, attaching sensors to their vehicles, and driving pre-mapped transects through their cities to collect temperature and humidity data that is linked to GPS coordinates.
The final product of the community science field campaigns is a set of high resolution air temperature and humidity data, and a report by CAPA Strategies that provides a detailed analysis of distribution of heat in the morning, afternoon and evening. Interactive, high resolution web maps of the modeled air temperature and heat index are also provided. The maps are produced using a machine learning process that combines satellite imagery and air temperature and humidity readings collected by volunteers during the campaign.
Background:
Columbus and Franklin County residents face acute challenges due to extreme heat. According to the 2014 ClimateCentral report, Columbus, OH is ranked a top 10 city with the most intense summer urban heat islands and ranked #1 city with the fastest-growing urban heat island (0.84°F per deca...
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