Extreme heat episodes are becoming more frequent, longer and more intense in southern European cities. Moreover, it is known that temperature can change significantly between urban areas in proximity, and that some neighbourhoods are more vulnerable than others due to their characteristics. What is not known is the very high-resolution thermal variation at street level and how heat is perceived by specific groups living in the neighbourhood. A new project appeals to citizen collaboration to identify, in specific neighbourhoods, the urban public spaces - squares, streets, parks, etc. - most exposed to extreme heat in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, and to propose strategies to mitigate its effects. The study aims to cover a wide variety of neighbourhoods with high vulnerability to extreme heat episodes, and to involve the most affected groups, in a way that is unprecedented worldwide.
(Heat Chronicles) will help to raise social awareness of the impact of periods of high temperatures, based on the axes of social citizen science. This is a new initiative by OpenSystems, a research group led by Josep Perelló, professor at the Faculty of Physics of the University of Barcelona, which promotes research projects based on citizen participation and artistic practices. This project repeats strategies previously applied by OpenSystems to measure air quality or to explore social support networks in mental health, with more than a thousand people involved. The projects maintain a strong social commitment, and are defined with the collaboration of third social sector entities.
How does extreme heat affect citizens?
"The new project involves different groups, in terms of age and neighbourhood profiles, and, with maps, we identify the most relevant spaces according to their point of view. We deploy the same strategy in neighbourhoods assessed as highly vulnerable according to urban and socioeconomic characteristics," says Josep Perelló, a member of the Department of Condensed Matter Physics and the UB Institute of Complex Systems (UBICS).
"Heat does not affect us all in the same way, nor do we experience it in the same way everywhere", continues Isabelle Bonhoure, member of the OpenSystems group and coordinator of the Heat Chronicles project. "This is why the neighbourhood and its social concerns are at the heart of the research that this project will deploy. We want to document extreme heat in public space and at the microscale, through thermal walks with the neighbourhood and always bearing in mind their knowledge of the territory as users of public space".
Thermal walks, sensors and solutions
The project is carried out with the collaboration of twelve entities, such as libraries, athenaeums, educational centres, neighbourhood groups and NGOs. It will bring together more than three hundred people in five areas and four municipalities. Specifically, the neighbourhoods of Congrés i els Indians and Sant Pere, Santa Caterina and La Ribera, in Barcelona; the neighbourhoods of Collblanc and Torrassa, in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, and the municipalities of Sant Vicenç dels Horts and Montcada i Reixac.
The calendar of activities includes workshops with all participants to identify the most relevant public urban spaces in relation to their social uses. There will also be "thermal walks" in different areas, to measure the temperature with sensors and assess the sensation of heat and the thermal comfort perceived by the participating groups in these spaces and in the streets in general, as is done in other cities around the world. The results, based on combining geolocated temperatures and heat perception, will finally be collectively interpreted to diagnose the problem more accurately and propose solutions based on scientific evidence.
The first campaign starts this May, and will be deployed in the phases of site identification (21-25 May), collective action (27 May to 1 June) and collective interpretation of the data (3-8 June). The second campaign, which will run from 1 to 19 July, will follow the same pattern of activities. During the month of November, a final day will be held to present all the results and the proposals for improvement in the urban area.
Chronicles of Heat (project PCI2022-132996is part of the European OPUSH project, which is implemented in collaboration with the European SENSE.STEAM project, and receives funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through the State Research Agency (MICIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and the European Union NextGeneration EU funds of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
