Climate Change Living with Extreme Heat: The Role of Data, Technology and Community

Russell Composto is the associate dean of undergraduate education at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Pennsylvania. Kristin L. Field is the director of education and program coordinator for the Penn-based SoftAE Program, a National Science Foundation Research Traineeship program. This piece was written for Perry World House’s 2023 Global Shifts Colloquium, “Living with Extreme Heat: Our Shared Future.”

As engineers, data and technology come to mind when considering possible solutions to living with extreme heat challenges in an urban environment. For example, the Philadelphia Heat Vulnerability Index attempts to quantify heat sensitivity by census tract using sociodemographic factors (e.g., education level) and health status (e.g., hypertension). This heat sensitivity map was then overlaid with a heat map to correlate the impact of extreme heat on the wellbeing of Philadelphia’s citizens. The authors of this important project found that the average surface temperature of the hottest regions was 3.9 to 7.8°F above the average for the city.  These maps identify the most vulnerable regions of the city and provide a roadmap for prioritizing areas most in need of intervention. Their study also provides insights into solutions by including maps of the tree canopy, health centers, and pools. The study relies on the use of surface temperature measurements to reflect heat exposure and surveys for the sensitivity data. The granular nature of mapping extreme heat onto health and sociodemographic factors is noteworthy, and the interactive map allows citizens to identify their neighborhood conditions. Technologists, politicians, healthcare providers, and support systems need to work together to protect citizens in priority areas to allow them to live as healthily as possible with extreme heat, a problem that is only growing as severe weather events continue to increase across the globe.

One experience we have had with natural disasters was oversight of an international grant supported by the National Science Foundation, “Research and Education in Active Coatings Technologies (REACT) for the Human Habitat.” It brought together thirty-seven scientists from the University of Pennsylvania, US partner schools, and industry and international partners to investigate water management, prevention of infection transmission, and nanomaterials for energy generation and storage. Although the project was successful from the perspective of student training and produced almost seventy publications,  REACT was not able to meet a user-inspired research goal, which was to prototype and test a tent with engineered surfaces that addressed water, sanitation, and energy demands. Although the annual REACT meeting in 2018 featured ShelterBox Trustee Bill Decker’s  talk on “Supporting disaster recovery through advanced emergency shelter materials,” this element of the project ultimately fell short because we should have learned more about the functionality and challenges of existing materials used for sheltering natural disaster victims before writing the proposal.  Not only should our background knowledge base have come from a broader, more transdisciplinary literature review, but also from talking to and working with on-the-ground providers of emergency and temporary shelters, which ideally would have first-hand knowledge of needs from those living in these shelters.

As we pivoted to better understand how to localize our interest in projects at the intersection of technology and community, we partnered with the Penn Institute for Urban Research (Penn IUR) around the topic of “Adapting to Extreme Heat in Philadelphia to Increase Human Vitality.” This research community project received funding from the Environmental Innovations Initiative (EII). Specifically, we wanted to work with the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Sustainability (OOS) to understand ongoing initiatives, as well as collaborating with the community on extreme heat topics.  In the summer of 2022, we received funding from the Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program and the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships to hire two undergraduate students, Sarah Sterinbach and Seito Sanford, to study Philadelphia’s extreme heat policies and to investigate cool roofing materials. Sterinbach met with OOS representatives to learn that the city’s policies include heat health, cool roofs, and neighborhoods. She concluded that there were needs to create community-driven programs in Philadelphia’s hottest neighborhoods; pass stricter cool roof laws; update the heat health warning system; educate communities about cooling methods; and modify the Philadelphia Climate Action Playbook to include extreme heat.  Sanford focused on roofing materials that can lower the internal temperature of rowhouses, including both advanced and traditional materials. He looked at passive solar cooling via evaporative cooling (EC) whereby water absorbs during evening, and as daytime temperature increases, the solar radiation converts liquid water to gas (rather than the radiation heating up the roof and thus the house). EC can lower inside temperatures by up to 9.6°C.  Sanford created a tile from a hydrogel (which are materials that absorb water) containing cellulose fibers (to add strength) and tested water uptake. Through EII funding, we co-organized two events during 2022 Climate Week at Penn on “Cities Taking the Lead on Global Extreme Heat” led by Penn IUR, and “Measuring Philly’s Heat and Air Quality: Organizer and Community Leader Perspectives.” In this second event, we heard about engaging citizen scientists living in some of Philadelphia’s most heat-vulnerable neighborhoods to collect heat data through a project with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. We also learned informally about skepticism from some local underserved communities regarding partnerships with Penn, based on historical interactions with the University and its researchers.

Coming from STEM higher education perspectives, we are acutely aware of our limitations in conceiving the productive intersections of “Cities and Heat,” the Perry World House Global Shifts Colloquium session in which Russell Composto served as a panelist. Based on our tracking of initiatives by the National Science Foundation and other US STEM-related government agency, this event is a much-needed step toward envisioning, strategizing, and doing real work on urban extreme heat and other complex challenges the world faces today.  As part of a National Science Foundation Research training grant for PhD students that started at Penn in 2022 under the leadership of Penn Engineering’s Chinedum Osuji, we are building a Soft AE training program that brings together the powerful tools of data science with the promise that soft materials brings for innovating for society’s needs, along with basic training in science policy and how technology and innovation are adopted and regulated. One of the clearest messages from these efforts so far is that this is hard. Specific issues include: training future working scientists and engineers in convergence research among fast-moving, highly technical disciplines that have not historically interacted much; giving students broad exposure to and experiences with disciplines and experts who are working on the same large problem from perspectives and with methods far from the ones we (and they) have comfort with; and providing appreciation (and tools for how to get) a thorough understanding of the needs of the people who are suffering most (and could benefit most) from the problems that technological innovations may purport to solve. This is in the context of building infrastructure for training current students and future STEM leaders. 

The topic of this panel and colloquium on extreme heat is a now problem.  How do we start doing this now with existing experts (and their students), the infrastructure currently in place, and communities where they are now with all their competing needs, given the all-too quickly increasing magnitude of extreme heat and its effects in population centers? How do we make sure all urban residents, especially those who have been minoritized and underserved, benefit from solutions, both those that are already available and those that are in development?  For our colleagues who have always been trained from a social, political, economic, or other societal lens, these may seem like naïve questions with many examples of successful research, innovation, and advocacy examples from their schools or disciplines. For Penn Engineering, and probably a number of STEM-oriented schools, departments, and centers, these are non-trivial questions. How do we align the timelines, training, perspectives, and abilities of our STEM researchers and thinkers to be able to contribute alongside those who are doing the hard work already?  How do we learn to better serve our urban communities to address short-term and longer-term needs around extreme heat?