Solutions for “cool” infrastructure
Cool infrastructure solutions have been piloted in hundreds of cities around the world, but there are thousands of cities that can and should adopt these tactics at large scale. However, it’s difficult for communities to plan, fund, deploy and track these solutions. A key barrier is actionable data.
Cities and businesses are seeking ways to set targets, prioritize investments and meaningfully measure progress. Without these tools, adoption of projects and policies will remain too slow to save lives. Absent data, investments can’t be selected and sited to maximize cost-effectiveness. Changes in urban surfaces are not being measured with methods that are repeatable, scalable and broadly accepted, stifling finance of these solutions, which relies in part on these metrics.
Efforts like the Smart Surfaces Coalition, Arsht-Rockefeller Resilience Center, Cool Cities Network, WRI projects including Data for Cool Cities and Cities4Forests, and others are aiming to address this need by generating local data on heat risk, getting it into the hands of policymakers and informing them about the impacts of their infrastructure choices. The hope is that new data used to power analytical tools that meet the needs of decision-makers can accelerate the adoption of and funding for cool infrastructure to help residents adapt to more extreme heat while bringing emissions down in time to avert even hotter temperatures.
