Heat exposure mapping
We built a heat exposure map of New York City that measures how much open sky sits above you as you walk from one part of the city to another.
Heat risk is recorded by neighbourhood, while the heat people actually meet is decided street by street.
A planner can see which areas are vulnerable and still have no way of knowing which routes through them leave someone in full sun.
We measured the open sky along every route and set it against the heat vulnerability of the neighbourhoods it passes through.
The two together show where the most exposed streets run through the places least able to cope with heat.
A city can see which routes leave people in the open and which blocks would gain the most from planting or shade.
The same map turns a general case for cooling into a specific one, street by street, that a department can act on and defend.