The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect impacts 400 cities the world over, and the number is increasing, in line with global urbanisation. One problem with urban heat is the absence of quantification methods for outdoor temperatures, which makes the issue more difficult to address or even baseline. Indeed, companies and asset owners do not have data for outdoor temperatures, and cannot correlate impacts to indoor energy usage to outdoor heat. All of this results in compounding costs to CAPEX, OPEX and, most important, human health.

In this context, it is now possible to provide a turnkey heat visualisation solution for a city by providing a digital heat baseline without placing additional infrastructure on the road, therefore without contributing to congestion or pollution. A single stream of data that combines, cleanses and aggregates multiple sources is the solution to making accurate decisions on the ground. Organisations cannot make real-time decisions with disparate data sources.

The heat data of outdoor temperatures needs to be informed by local events or micro-climate data, or surface temperatures and how pedestrians are behaving around those temperatures.

It is feasible to utilise city data gathered by an analytics system, which is focused on the granular human-level experience – the point where the population experiences heat on a daily basis. This remote method of collection enables a heat map development to identify high-risk zones within the asset for city managers or property owners.

The process will provide detailed measurements to visualise thermal readings with up to a one-square-metre granularity and near real-time monitoring. That way, consumers can select their coolest routes for their next walking distance; and public and private enterprises can receive guidance that can help them map out strategies on cooling outdoor spaces.

At this stage of the climate crisis, cities are under enormous pressure to develop new strategies and adopt new solutions that will make their infrastructure, economies and communities more resilient to the most serious impacts of climate change, whether that is rising sea levels off coastal cities or the urban heat island effect, among numerous other challenges.

The technology is there, whose objective falls perfectly into local federal strategic directions and the National Climate Change Plan of the United Arab Emirates, which serves as a roadmap to bolster nationwide actions for climate, and urban heat island mitigation and adaptation in the UAE until 2050. Through this Climate Plan, the UAE will further strive to be at the frontline of global efforts to prove that climate action can go hand in hand with continuous economic development. The drive that this country puts into emerging markets, the environment and technology offers the ideal platform for government support and deployment regionally.

By building on national policies for green growth and sustainable development – particularly the UAE Green Agenda 2015-2030 – and reflecting on valuable inputs received from stakeholders in the public, private and non-governmental sectors, the Climate Plan is envisaged to strengthen the momentum of the UAE. This is not a stand-alone policy – rather, it serves as a complementary plan of action that specifically addresses climate change.

This is a living document and will be updated periodically according to the progress made. That said, the available technology – a heat resilience system, which is adaptable from city to city and supported with data analytics, will serve as a decision-making tool for municipalities battling environmental heat stress. By testing the technology in the uniquely adapted urban environment of the UAE, which is simultaneously digitally enabled and environmentally challenged, it is possible to stress test the system before exporting to the other 400 heat-impacted cities across the globe.