With summer now in full swing, forty organisations have collaborated on a plan for Sydney’s escalating heat challenge. Led by the Greater Sydney Heat Taskforce and guided by academic experts, the newly published Greater Sydney Heat Smart City Plan received input from local councils, state authorities and nation-wide organisations in health, environment, urban planning and business, across both public and private sectors.
Chair of the Greater Sydney Heat Taskforce Kerry Robinson said, “Heat has killed more Australians than fire, flood and storms combined, and has far-reaching impacts on community wellbeing, the economy, infrastructure and the environment.”
The plan notes that between 2012 and 2022, extreme heat was responsible for up to 84 percent of weather related hospitalisations – a figure which is expected to increase with climate change.
Additionally, Robinson noted that the estimated “cost of heatwaves in Western Sydney alone is $1.4 billion per year and growing. These costs impact businesses, households and government services. We can’t afford not to act.”
In response to what Robinson describes as “Australia’s most deadly natural hazard,” the five-year Greater Sydney Heat Smart City Plan outlines six key directions and forty recommendations for building a heat-resilient city.
These include:
- Heat smart decisions based on improved collaboration, measurement and monitoring of heat risk
- Heat smart places for people that keep people safe from, and mitigate the effects of heat, which requires the adaptation of local and state planning controls
- Heat smart economies that plan for heat, support risk reduction, minimise economic impacts of heat and seek commercial opportunities in adaptation
- Heat smart infrastructure that is both interconnected and resilient, enabling communities to survive and thrive
- Heatwave-ready governance that provides funding and guidance to support effective heatwave management and empowers communities to build resilience, reduce risks and manage emergencies
- Heat smart research from collaborative research and practitioner teams that delivers heat-resilient solutions.
The plan is a joint initiative of the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils (WSOC) and Resilient Sydney, and was jointly funded by the state and federal governments through the Disaster Risk Reduction Fund.
Moving forward, the taskforce will seek to work with its partners to implement the actions of the plan.
Source: Architecture - architectureau
