A method of heat risk territorial assessment to support the urban planning

Abstract

The heat risk territorial assessment is a tool for evaluating strategies and actions to combat high temperatures because it can consider the spatial factors and trends and to identify the places of greatest risk. This tool requires the use of a method based on the mapping of hazard, exposure and vulnerability factors.

This article is the report of two complementary and integrated activities that describes an elaboration path not yet concluded. The first activity concerns the continuation of the development of a functional evaluation method for integrating territorial risk analysis with urban planning tools; the second activity, carried out as part of an applied research on climate change adaptation actions, concerns the application of a method of heat risk territorial assessment of the population. This application was made on a municipality of the Città metropolitana di Milano where we were able so far to develop only some aspects of the risk analysis, while later we will integrate this application with the urban plan. However, the repercussions on urban planning decision-making processes that the aim is to achieve range from pervasive and aware management of urban transformations oriented towards the overall reduction of heat risk levels to the realisation of resolutive punctual interventions.