Ashton Rohmer Oct. 13, 2018 11:37 a.m. PDT

Climate change adaptation ideas

Hi there,

I work in the resilience space and would be interested to see if it'd be possible to:

- develop sensors that track micro-climates in the District to monitor the urban heat island effect and in turn direct mitigation investment (maybe could be a smartphone app that logs temperature?)
- create an app where citizens can take pictures of localized flooding that will immediately be routed to local agencies so improvements to stormwater and green infrastructure can be targeted in smaller-scale problem areas

Community: are these realistic ideas? Government folks: would this data be helpful? Please contact me if interested in teaming up!

All the best,
Ashton

4 Replies

Melissa Deas

moderator

Oct. 15, 2018 2:47 p.m. PDT

Ashton - thanks for the questions. I think these are both great ideas!

The District is actively thinking about urban heat island (UHI) issues and would definitely be interested in data that could be used to track micro-climates and also assess if interventions (tree planting, cool roofs, etc.) are making an impact. We currently have two sets of data that we rely on to understand the UHI – a surface temperature map that used Landsat data and a recently released ambient air temperature map produced by NOAA. These might be useful in terms of thinking where you might place sensors. I think we also might be interested in exploring internal temperatures like they did in the Harlem Heat Project.

There is definitely a need to better understand flooding since much of it is never reported by homeowners or residents to District government. While we have been able to map projections for tidal and riverine flooding, it is much more difficult to map heavy precipitation related flooding. Any information that can help us monitor this risk certainly would be useful. I think the trick here would be to develop a system that a wide cross-section of residents would actually use.

Best,

Melissa Deas (DOEE)

Pedro Vicente Oct. 16, 2018 8:50 a.m. PDT

Melissa

>>We currently have two sets of data that we rely on to understand the UHI – a surface temperature map that used Landsat data and a >>recently released ambient air temperature map produced by NOAA.

are these datasets available to the public?

ref

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island

Jack Burbridge

moderator

Oct. 17, 2018 6:33 a.m. PDT

@Ashton Rohmer
Hi Ashton,
You may have met Don DuRousseau from GW (https://it.gwu.edu/don-durousseau) at the event last Saturday. There is a researcher at GW named Amanda Northcross (https://publichealth.gwu.edu/departments/environmental-and-occupational-health/amanda-northcross) who is interested in using low-cost sensors that can be available to residents and others to track micro-climate changes within the District. I would reach out to either of these folks to get a sense of what they are doing.

Jack

Melissa Deas

moderator

Oct. 17, 2018 8:53 a.m. PDT

@Pedro Vicente
Thanks for the question. Both of these layers are new and not yet on Open Data DC. Reach out to me by email and I can see if we can get them to you.

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