City of Melbourne launches new tool to combat rising urban temperatures

The City of Melbourne has announced the development of an innovative new tool to map heat hazards and strengthen responses to extreme heat events.

The council has partnered with Climasens - a leading Melbourne-based climate intelligence start-up - to test the heat risk platform, which aims to boost the city’s climate resilience. 

Using live weather and climate data to identify real-time heat risk insights, including heat exposure and social vulnerability, the insights will be used to map heat hotspots across the city - identifying heat-vulnerable populations and priority areas for cooling strategies and initiatives.

Currently going through an autumn heat wave, climate change is seeing Melbourne experience hotter days, longer and more intense bushfires, and less rainfall. By 2050, the city will experience an average of 16 heat events each year.

Melbourne became the sixth city in the world, and the first in Australasia, to join the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Centre’s City Champions For Heat Action initiative - with the appointment of Krista Milne and Tiffany Crawford as Co-Chief Heat Officers last year.

Commenting on the initiative, City of Melbourne Lord Mayor, Sally Capp stated "we’re tackling the climate emergency in many ways. City of Melbourne has planted approximately 3,000 trees in the municipality each year to increase canopy cover and cool routes throughout the city.”

“We have introduced our FOGO collection service to more than 23,000 households, diverting over 2,368 tonnes of organic waste from landfill and transforming it into fertilizer to use throughout our parks and gardens. And, we are the first city to trial a FOGO collection in high-rise buildings."  

“We’re also using smarter technology to help us detect and prepare for heat events and protect our community.”   

“This new tool will identify our city’s most vulnerable areas, and we look forward to working with Climasens and their team of innovators to bring the heat risk platform to life over the coming year.”  

City of Melbourne Co-Chief Heat Officer, Krista Milne added "this partnership builds on the work Council is doing to cool Melbourne by 4 degrees - from greening the city, developing resilient infrastructure and providing practical support to Melburnians during heat waves.”   

Climasens co-founder and Chief Executive, Joseph Glesta went on to say "extreme heat exacerbates existing inequalities and disproportionately affects the most vulnerable in society.”

“We think it is critical to identify this risk to both populations and the places they live to better understand how to plan, prepare and respond to future heatwaves.”

Click here for more information.