Executive Summary

Extreme heat is the deadliest of all natural disasters, and its impacts fall unevenly across communities. Location matters. Neighborhoods with limited greenspace, fewer resources, and higher rates of health vulnerability face greater risk, while critical infrastructure systems, such as energy and transportation, strain under high temperatures. Understanding where and when heat concentrates in cities is essential for protecting public health, guiding interventions, and building resilience. 

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Addressing this need, organizers at The Works, Inc., The University of Memphis, and The City of Memphis, in partnership with the Center for Collaborative Heat Monitoring, CAPA Strategies, and local community members, conducted a Heat Watch campaign to map heat across their region. Aiming to capture typical hot weather conditions, community data collectors mounted sensors to their vehicles and drove pre-planned routes to measure air temperature and relative humidity across varying land uses, land covers, and points of interest. Using these collected data, CAPA Strategies generated high-resolution models of ambient air temperature and heat index, employing a method that improves upon traditional satellite-based descriptions of urban heat. 

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During the campaign's planning stages, project partners worked together to recruit community members to serve as data collectors, coordinated logistics for their campaign day event, and designed driving routes to sample key areas for heat mapping. Campaign participants received training on the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, helping to increase awareness of the issue and its impacts. The campaign also garnered media attention, further raising awareness about the project and the UHI effect.

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In short, the project team achieved two main objectives:

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1. Developed high-resolution maps showing the distribution of air temperature and humidity (heat index) across the study area. 

2. Built local partnerships that help communities better understand and address the inequitable risks of extreme heat.

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The results offer a foundational snapshot of how urban heat varies across the study area and how landscape features influence local temperature and humidity patterns. This report presents the campaign process, methodology, results, and initial data observations from the CAPA team, highlights community engagement aspects and media coverage, and makes recommendations for how to build on these new findings and resources.