Implications of Budget Policies and Other Constraints on Urban Adaptation: The Case of Extreme Heat Impacts

The global temperature rise and the subsequent rise in the number of days with extreme heat conditions can increase the number of heat-related mortalities. The implications of these changes can be even more accentuated in the cities due to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon. To alleviate the effects, city planners can present future adaptive actions. These actions can include increasing tree cover, cool roofs, cool pavements and so on. However, presenting an adaptation plan for the future can be a difficult task due to the number of uncertainties and unknowns in the system. These uncertainties can include but are not limited to: impacts of adaptive actions on temperature, the relationship between temperature and mortality in different groups, and future climate conditions. This study evaluates the implications of financial policies and constraints on urban adaptation under these uncertainties. We use the City-Heat Equity Adaptation Tool (City-HEAT) to identify adaptation pathways for different future time scales while focusing on reasonable city expenditure using different constraints on the pathways. The framework uses the Borg multi-objective evolutionary algorithm and considers 6000 scenarios capturing the uncertainties that are present in the system. The framework is demonstrated for the city of Baltimore in USA.