Google's new tool tackles extreme urban heat

Google unveiled a new tool Wednesday aimed at helping city-based decision-makers take steps to lower the impacts from extreme heat.

Why it matters: Climate change is disproportionately affecting urban areas, particularly disadvantaged areas that tend to be the hottest.

• Multiple cities, for example, now have chief heat officers or their equivalent, including Miami-Dade County and Phoenix.

Zoom in: The Google tool uses satellite-based, high-resolution land surface temperature data.

• It employs machine-learning algorithms to identify buildings, trees and other factors critical to determining how much heat a portion of land absorbs.
• It also incorporates indicators of social vulnerability, including income statistics, to identify the areas most in need of heat relief.
• Using the model-based tool, officials can see how average summer land surface temperatures would change if certain actions were taken, such as increasing the tree cover of a particular neighborhood or installing cool roofs.

Between the lines: While heat officers can advocate for policies, they often lack decision-making power within a city or regional government.

• The new tool could give these officials data to bring to mayors or use to apply for grants.

What they're saying: "Eventually our hope is that thousands of cities can use this tool to implement solutions," Mansi Kansal, Google's product manager for heat resilience, tells Axios in an interview.