2 minute read
Urban heat in the spotlight of new video series
Urban heat in the spotlight
of new video series
WA capacity building organisation New WAter Ways has just released a video series on urban heat.
Featuring Professor Nigel Tapper of Monash University’s School of Earth Atmosphere and Environment, each of the five videos in the series covers a different aspect of urban heat and the benefits of irrigated green infrastructure:
How urban heat affects the community How can we reduce heat in a city? What can community do to reduce urban heat? Why do cities get hot? What are the many benefits of green infrastructure?
Video 1 Urban heat affecting community
Video 1: Urban heat affecting community
The first video covers the health impacts of heat waves and the heat vulnerability of urban populations. Nigel looks at the susceptibility variables for human health impacts, and the heat–mortality relationship in various cities throughout Australia.
Video 2 How can we reduce heat in a city?
Video 2: How can we reduce heat in a city?
In this video, Nigel discusses the urban heat mitigation produced from different scales of investment in urban greening and the significant cooling that can be achieved particularly when strategies are combined. He also explains why irrigated green infrastructure is one of the best things for city cooling.
In this video, Nigel talks about how to improve our community’s resilience to urban heat and contribute to a cooler and greener community. He explains why the most obvious actions we can take are to plant more trees and provide opportunities to irrigate, such as harvesting water at home to irrigate lawns and vegetation. He also explains the importance of increasing the perviousness of a city.
Video 4 Why do cities get hot?
Video 4: Why do cities get hot?
This video covers the main contributors to urban heat and key drivers. Nigel explains that lack of evaporation from impervious surfaces in cities prevents the release of heat into the atmosphere, making cities hotter than rural areas. He also looks at the link between urban heat and climate change.
Video 5
To round out the series, Nigel discusses the role of green infrastructure, water sensitive urban design (WSUD), and trees in addressing adverse climatic conditions of urban areas. He explains the importance of keeping these assets well irrigated and how to achieve that even with water shortages, and answers the common question of whether exotics work just as well as native trees.
Professor Nigel Tapper completed his PhD on urban climate, a subject matter that was distinctly unsexy at the time. Now, thirty years later and on a warmer planet, Nigel is involved in an expert panel on infrastructure and settlement of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the Cities as Water Supply Catchments program, helping to bring down the mercury in our urban areas and the planet as a whole.
