Heat resources for community members and practitioners
Publications
Guidebooks and Workbooks
PAS Report 600 provides holistic guidance to help practitioners increase urban heat resilience equitably in the communities they serve. This PAS Report equips planners with the background knowledge, planning framework, and catalog of comprehensive approaches they need to advance urban heat resilience and create a more equitable and sustainable future in an increasingly urban and warming world.
Read the report
This codebook outlines the method for conducting Plan Quality Evaluation for Heat Resilience. The methodology has two parts- Plan Quality Evaluation and Heat Strategy Evaluation.
This guidebook explains the rationale for the PIRS™ for Heat, provides a step-by-step guide for any practitioner or researcher interested in applying the methodology, includes a detailed and ready-to-go worksheet, and summarizes key plan integration findings from five communities across the U.S.
This workbook contains all of the spreadsheets you need to complete the Plan Integration for Resilience ScorecardTM (PIRS™) for Heat.
Reports
Keith, Ladd; Meerow, Sara; Roy, Malini; Trego, Shaylynn; Schmidt, Erika; Haskins, Jack; and Leyba, Bryan. (2023). Plan Evaluation for Heat Resilience: City of Tucson, AZ. Southwest Urban Corridor Integrated Field Laboratory (SW-IFL) – Arizona State University and University of Arizona. Available from https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/669877
Trego, Shaylynn; Meerow, Sara; Keith, Ladd; Schmidt, Erika; Leyba, Bryan; and Jordan, Lindsey. (2023). Plan Evaluation for Heat Resilience: City of Phoenix, AZ. Southwest Urban Corridor Integrated Field Laboratory (SW-IFL) – Arizona State University and University of Arizona. Available from https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/670044
Meerow, Sara; Keith, Ladd; Roy, Malini; Trego, Shaylynn; Schmidt, Erika; Haskins, Jack; and Leyba, Bryan. (2023). Plan Evaluation for Heat Resilience: City of Tempe, AZ. Southwest Urban Corridor Integrated Field Laboratory (SW-IFL) – Arizona State University and University of Arizona. Available from: https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/670109
Keith, Ladd; Meerow, Sara; Roy, Malini; Trego, Shaylynn; Jordan, Lindsey; Barret, Karli; and Gowda, Kavana Sadashiva. (2024). Plan Evaluation for Heat Resilience: City of Mesa, AZ. Southwest Urban Corridor Integrated Field Laboratory (SW-IFL) – Arizona State University and University of Arizona. Available from: https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/674047
Keith, Ladd; Meerow, Sara; Roy, Malini; Trego, Shaylynn; Gowda, Kavana Sadashive; Barrett, Karli; and Jordan, Lindsey. (2024). Plan Evaluation for Heat Resilience: City of Casa Grande, AZ. Southwest Urban Corridor Integrated Field Laboratory (SW-IFL) – Arizona State University and University of Arizona. Available from: https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/674045
Keith, Ladd; Meerow, Sara; Roy, Malini; Trego, Shaylynn; Barrett, Karli; Jordan, Lindsey; and Gowda, Kavana Sadashive. (2024). Plan Evaluation for Heat Resilience: City of Flagstaff, AZ. Southwest Urban Corridor Integrated Field Laboratory (SW-IFL) – Arizona State University and University of Arizona. https://arizona.aws.openrepository.com/handle/10150/674046
Keith, Ladd; Meerow, Sara; Roy, Malini; Trego, Shaylynn; Jordan, Lindsey; Gowda, Kavana Sadashive; and Barrett, Karli. (2024). Plan Evaluation for Heat Resilience: City of Nogales, AZ. Southwest Urban Corridor Integrated Field Laboratory (SW-IFL) – Arizona State University and University of Arizona. https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/674048
Keith, Ladd; Meerow, Sara; Trego, Shaylynn; and Schmidt, Erika. (2022). City of Tempe, AZ: Plan Integration for Resilience ScorecardTM (PIRSTM) For Heat. Arizona State University and University of Arizona. Available from: https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/666700
Keith, Ladd; Meerow, Sara; Trego, Shaylynn; Schmidt, Erika; Jensen, Lauren; Berke, Philip; and DeAngelis, Joseph. (2022). City of Kent, WA: Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™ (PIRS™) For Heat. Arizona State University and University of Arizona. Available from: https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/666696
Roy, Malini; Keith, Ladd. (2024). Climate Profile for Pima County for Pima Prospers Plan Update. Pima County. https://content.civicplus.com/api/assets/c60add15-ef4a-4902-8cab-e5e6d549ed06
Publications
Meerow, S., Keith, L., Roy, M., & Trego, S. (2024). Plan evaluation for heat resilience: complementary methods to comprehensively assess heat planning in Tempe and Tucson, Arizona. Environmental Research Letters, 19(8), 084050. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad5d05
Meerow, S., & Keith, L. (2024). Cities at the forefront of emerging US heat governance. One Earth, 7(8), 1330-1334. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2024.07.013
Roy, M., Keith, L., Arora, M., Luna, F., & Robinson, J. (2024). Coproducing Opportunities to Advance Heat Resilience in Southern Arizona. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-24-0216.1
Keith, L., Meerow, S., Jensen, L., Trego, S., Schmidt, E. L., & Berke, P. (2023). Evaluating urban heat mitigation across networks of plans. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 0739456X231215780. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?output=instlink&q=info:bK-Y-wB-ER8J:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=0,3&scillfp=1272877029742299156&oi=lle
Keith, L., Gabbe, C. J., & Schmidt, E. (2023). Urban heat governance: examining the role of urban planning. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 25(5), 642-662. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?output=instlink&q=info:a87by2XlZvgJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=0,3&scillfp=2441799300333195110&oi=lle
Trego, S., Meerow, S., & Keith, L. (2023). Heat planning in small and medium-sized cities: A collaborative application of PIRS™ for heat in Kent, WA, USA. Socio-Ecological Practice Research, 5(4), 409-422. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s42532-023-00166-6.pdf
Meerow, S., & Keith, L. (2022). Planning for extreme heat: A national survey of US planners. Journal of the American Planning Association, 88(3), 319-334.https://scholar.google.com/scholar?output=instlink&q=info:h1zdQSFCL0AJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=0,3&scillfp=11717759458793158175&oi=lle
Keith, L., Meerow, S., Roy, M., Trego, S., & Sobhaninia, S. Integrating Three Plan Evaluation Approaches for Heat Resilience Planning. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Malini-Roy/publication/385525361_Integrating_Three_Plan_Evaluation_Approaches_for_Heat_Resilience_Planning/links/672924fa77b63d1220da6d04/Integrating-Three-Plan-Evaluation-Approaches-for-Heat-Resilience-Planning.pdf
Keith, L., Meerow, S., Hondula, D. M., Turner, V. K., & Arnott, J. C. (2021). Deploy heat officers, policies and metrics. Nature, 598(7879), 29-31. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02677-2.pdf
Local and State Resources
In 2020, the City Council declared a Climate Emergency and set Tucson on a path to carbon neutrality by 2030. The Climate Action Hub documents progress and includes the Climate Action Plan and Heat Action Roadmap.
Pima County's website provides tips and resources to help people deal with extreme heat.
Pima Association of Government is a federally designated metropolitan planning organization for Pima County. The Planning Map provides decision-makers with a tool to identify areas that could benefit from green infrastructure and increase heat resilience.
Learn how to recognize, prevent, and treat heat-related illnesses on the Arizona Department of Public Health (AZDPH)'s Extreme Heat portal.
The National Weather Service provides information on current conditions, hazards, forecasts, and local programs for Tucson, Arizona.
National Resources
The National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) is an integrated system that builds understanding of the problem of extreme heat, defines demand for climate services that enhance societal resilience, develops science-based products and services from a sustained climate science research program, and improves capacity, communication, and societal understanding of the problem in order to reduce morbidity and mortality due to extreme heat. The NIHHIS is a jointly developed system by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Heat Island Reduction Program works with local officials, community groups, researchers, and other stakeholders to identify opportunities to implement heat island mitigation policies and projects that create comfortable and sustainable communities.
The Fifth National Climate Assessment was written to help inform decision-makers, utility and natural resource managers, public health officials, emergency planners, and other stakeholders by providing a thorough examination of the effects of climate change on the United States.
The U.S. National Weather Service's HeatRisk is an index that provides a forecast of risk of heat-related impacts over a 24-hour period. The index gives risk guidance for decision makers and heat-sensitive populations.
Additional Resources
The Global Heat Health Information Network (GHHIN) is an independent, voluntary, member-driven forum of scientists, practitioners, and policy makers focused on improving our capacity to protect populations from the avoidable health risks of extreme heat in a changing climate. GHHIN is spearheaded by the World Health Organization and World Meteorological Organization Joint Office for Climate and Health and the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office.
The Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation developed the Heat Action Platform as a place for city officials, practitioners, and financial institutions to find guidance on reducing the human and economic impacts of extreme heat at the regional or municipal level.