Extreme heat, grimly referred to as ‘the silent killer,’ is the leading cause of weather-related fatalities in the United States. Not only does extreme heat pose a risk to human life, it also threatens to stymie our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and manage congestion. Shifting trips away from private vehicles and toward alternative, cleaner modes of transportation can be a key mechanism to reduce emissions and congestion from passenger vehicles. However, during heatwaves, people walking and biking are most at risk due to high levels of heat exposure, owing to which many opt to travel by car (contributing to more GHG emissions and congestion) or forgo these trips (leading to unfulfilled mobility needs and, consequently, lower quality of life and well-being).

The interdisciplinary ‘Neutralizing Onerous Heat Effects on Active Transportation’ Initiative (NO-HEAT), led by Prof. Rounaq Basu at Georgia Tech, aims to support multimodal transportation by making it safer and more comfortable for residents to walk, bike, and use public transit in their communities. I will provide an overview of published and ongoing work to improve heat resilience capacity and enhance climate justice by examining how people adapt to extreme heat by changing their activity-mobility patterns. I will also demonstrate how open-source data and decision-support tools can be used to identify high-risk areas and enable urban planners and policy-makers to proactively plan for extreme heat mitigation across different communities and contexts.