Miami: How the World's First Chief Heat Officer combats extreme temperatures

The increasing heat in our city is a combination of both climate change and development patterns. Because we have more pavement, more air conditioning, more internal combustion vehicles running around, we have higher temperatures in our city than in the surrounding Everglades. Welcome to this special English edition of the Gorsa Neustadt, a German podcast series by Zabilla Barton, in which she talks to pioneering leaders who, inspired by the World Economic Forum's great reset initiative, are committed to making our world smarter, greener and fairer. Today I'm very excited to welcome Jane Gilbert, the world's first chief heat officer. Her task is to prepare for and protect Miami citizens from the heat. Extreme heat is responsible for more death than all other climate-driven disasters in the US combined. We talk about around 12,000 deaths each year. In a few decades, according to a study by the University of Washington, the annual toll could be close to 100,000. And by then, 94% of Miami Beach would be also underwater. Not a small task to manage. Good morning, Jane Gilbert in Miami. How is the weather today? Oh, it is a beautiful day here in Miami. We are in the mid-70s and sunny. It is gorgeous. It is gorgeous. That is why so many people like to live here. Yeah, of course, which is understandable if we just look at your great weather. However, it is also part of a paradox, which we hopefully will address here during the interview. Let's start with this question that came up during COP26, the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow. From a climate change perspective, and that was the question, what do Mumbai, Miami, the Maldives have in common? And of course, you know the answer. They are all, and that's the answer, they are all at serious risk of being completely submerged. So you, as the world's first chief heat officer, what can you do? Well, first I want to say I came into this role after having served to the city of Miami as the first chief resilience officer, where we were addressing very much the increasing risks related to sea level rise and increased flood risks overall. That is, and that effort is being done in collaboration. We have a metropolitan government or county, around the airport port. I should say that one of the reasons Miami is so attractive is we have one of the most active ports and airports in the country. So huge trade and logistics, big finance sector, and certainly a tourism sector that's very robust. So now the tech sector is catching up with that. We have a very strong health care sector here. So we've done a lot of work, the cities and the county together, on creating plans and implementing plans to address the increasing risks related to sea level rise. You mentioned the whole of the island of Miami Beach getting inundated. Well, that's if we do nothing, right? That's without action. But with elevating streets, elevating our coastal infrastructure and installing improved drainage systems, we actually can live here with and adapt to that change over time and creating sort of blue-green spaces, as you've seen in the Netherlands. So that's a lot of the work that I came into my current role having done. And as I was doing outreach in the neighborhoods within the city of Miami, which is our downtown urban core, one of the largest concerns of our most vulnerable populations are socioeconomically vulnerable and disadvantaged populations is heat. And that came up a lot. It came up a lot as community organizations reached out also to those communities to do focus groups and interviews about their top concerns related to climate change. And even though Miami is known internationally for its risk, increasing risk related to sea level rise and flood risk, heat was a super high concern of these populations. In addition, the Adrian Arch Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, of which Miami-Dade was one of their first community partners, formed an extreme heat resilience alliance. They saw heat as an emerging threat amongst cities globally. And it was really out of a conversation between the Bat Barstrock Resilience Center and our mayor, Daniella Levine Kava, that the idea of a chief heat officer came to being. My role is to improve coordination and accelerate existing initiatives that either mitigate our urban heat islands or help our communities to manage and prevent heat related illnesses. And to initiate new initiatives. And I do that in coordination with our office within the county of resilience and sustainability that's focused on both the flooding adaptation and the carbon mitigation. So we work very much together because ideally we want to address solutions that have multiple benefits. You know, for instance, if you're designing a streetway, you want to design streets that want to incentivize low carbon mobility and active mobility. In order to do that, you want to be able to provide shade and comfort and carbon sequestration. And if you're doing that, you're also improving the drainage capacity of a street. Right. So we're looking for solutions that address that sometimes it's more challenging. We live in a city that has high penetration and use of air conditioning. And as it gets hotter here every year, people are using that air conditioning more and more, and that creates a lot of waste heat in the same places our urban heat island. So in that case, we're really focusing on how do we help particularly our lower income communities retrofit their residences to for higher efficiency. So that reduces their energy burden reduces and but keeps them safe in terms of the exposure to heat. Before we go into more detail, can we talk a bit about the average temperature and how the temperature plus the humidity have changed over time? Let's say, I don't know, last 50 years. What kind of an increase was it? Or is it? Yeah, absolutely. So we are looking at an average increase of about a degree Celsius is about two degrees a little over two degrees Fahrenheit. So about a degree Celsius since 1985. And how that translates. So to your point, Miami's heat is a combination of temperature and humidity. And because our body has a harder time regulating heat when it's very humid. So whereas the Southwest of the United States can have temperatures well over 100, you know, in the 120s, we never get temperatures over 100. We talk about 39 degrees Celsius right around. Yes. Thank you. No, no, no, sorry. Europe here. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. So. So here you're going to have to help me. It's 90 degrees heat index. We have that currently about half the year. That goes. And then we have a heat index of 105 right now on average historically about seven days a year. And that that is when it's really dangerous for anyone to be outside and extended for an extended period of time. Sorry to interrupt, but here we talk about around 40 degrees Celsius. Okay, so 40 degrees Celsius heat index combination of temperature and humidity. That seven days average a year is expected to increase to 88 days a year by mid century, almost three months. So we're talking about a much longer period of time where our days are really very difficult. Now, for people like me that work inside inside air conditioning, I can adapt. But for those that are outdoor workers, construction workers, large agricultural community here, landscapers, public safety professionals, a crossing guard at a school, you know, all of these are exposed to heat and need to be able to function through the day or summer camps, kids in summer camp. This is going to start to present more and more of a challenge for our community to adapt. So, so that's really what we're, what we're looking at is an the increasing heat in our city is a combination of both climate change and development pattern. Because we have more pavements, more air conditioning, more internal combustion vehicles running around. We have higher temperatures in our city than in the surrounding Everglades by, by probably in centigrade about five degrees centigrade. And what consequence does it have for people's health? So, heat can impact us in many ways. And we don't have it well documented because many times it's recorded as a heart attack or a stroke or a kidney failure, all of which could have actually been caused for certainly exacerbated by heat exposure. But so you can have cramps, you know, on the light end, you can have cramps, you could have faint or pass out, you could have heat exhaustion. And when it gets very dangerous and in danger of a fatality of the heat stroke, when, when your body really shuts down, gets a temperature over 104, then you're, you're, you're quite at risk. And there are certain people that are more vulnerable. Pregnant women, young children are more vulnerable and really pregnant women can also have preterm bergs as a result of over exposure to heat. And so, if you're more vulnerable, people on certain prescription medications, and certainly people with preexisting conditions related to heart disease, diabetes, lung COPD, all of them are more vulnerable to the exposure to heat. You mentioned earlier that, of course, you have the luxury of air conditioning and of course anybody who can afford air conditioning will do, but with the increasing energy prices and everything. How do people manage what does it mean to the living standard. So, people are adjusting their, keeping their AC off at night to save costs if they're having a hard time even paying rent, let alone the utility bills and our utility bills are going up, not only because the heat is going up, but because the prices are going up and per unit use. So, so it is a big challenge in, in, in, if you imagine those low, lower income residents may also be outdoor workers. So they're getting exposed to the heat throughout the day and then they're coming home and they can't afford to cool themselves down. Well, they can't, you know, one of the biggest risks is not being able to cool down at night. And if they can't afford that, that can be very, very challenging. So they, they try to manage with opening the windows and fans and things a lot with that you can drape, you know, wet towels over you that'll help to evaporate. And all of that are techniques that can definitely help and people do know how to quite resilient in that way. However, it, it, it, in some cases isn't enough chronic exposure can result challenges. And how do you address it. I think you mentioned it in a previous interview that you have around 300,000 outdoor workers. Yes, that is a big number. What do you help them. So, we actually had a workshop earlier this week with 90 participants on where outdoor workers are represented. So, we have a group of units, some more employers, some more researchers to discuss this very issue. We have currently pending state legislation that would provide protection for outdoor workers. Right now, there are no occupational health and safety regulations around heat. Employers are obligated to provide a safe environment, but it is not. And there are guidelines for what that safety means in terms of heat exposure. There are no regulations. These proposed regulations would require employers to provide training programs for both managers and employees. And to put in place procedures to make sure that they have portable water available at the work site that they provide a 10 minute break every two hours at a minimum for any data over 90 degrees and that they have emergency procedures on site. So, if someone starts to show signs of heat stress, heat exhaustion, they can immediately take them off the work site and address those from a medical standpoint. We're hoping that that will get passed at the state level it would be much harder for us to pass the kind of policy here locally because we don't have a Department of Labor we don't have a way to enforce it. But even in the absence of that, we are looking to design a campaign to raise awareness amongst both employees and employers about what they really need to be doing and it would protect their bottom line even without the regulations because there are risks in terms of workman's compensation insurance increases, lost time on the job, turnover, etc. Unless they protect the workers they can reduce all of those costs. So, there are incentives we're going to look to recognize those employers that are doing the right thing and also call out those that might be identified as not doing the right thing so that we can raise the level of awareness and hopefully have practices here. Maybe we can talk a bit and you can talk and you can take us through today's situation. I saw that you have developed an extreme heat toolkit or you also have set up a health task force and even there was talk about resilience hubs. Can you talk us through that? Sure. So yeah, when I was hired for this position in that last summer, the two things I wanted to do first was certainly during the summer quickly start raising awareness about the dangers of heat in partnership with our National Weather Service through all our public facilities or parks and our police or library system or social media handles, etc. But then I also wanted to create a toolkit. We have 34 municipalities within Miami-Dade County that they could also use this toolkit to begin thinking about their policies and procedures, whether it's around increasing green infrastructure or putting more shade at bus stops around playgrounds or it's addressing from a more management standpoint of informing no residents, informing outdoor workers, informing residents of what they can do to increase efficiency in their homes and training disaster volunteers to be those first responders in the event of extreme heat time. So we're doing that and we formed a 15 membered versus task force. We're currently the idea is to develop a region wide plan of action for the next three years. And right now we're having a series of public workshops, each focusing on a different aspect of how we either mitigate urban heat or help people to manage that inevitable heat. So we had one focused on data and research, one on public education and outreach, one on emergency management and response. This week we had one focused on outdoor workers, our next two are going to be focused on housing and then streets and trees. And then out of that we will put together that through the action plan. It's fascinating and so there's massive amount of work and it works from what you were saying, mainly in the multi stakeholder approach here, and there's nothing you can do on your own really is that that's a Yes, no we have our health department, our national weather service or university sector, nonprofit sector, chambers of commerce we have involved. Mm hmm. Miami is actually certainly for me more known for its hurricanes and floods and wildfires and and I know that you've got shelters for floods and wildfires, but you also were saying that you want to create or maybe you have created already those heat shelters and yeah how does it differ from the others. What are the needs. So, so just to back up, we in Miami have many decades of experience in responding to hurricanes, because of vulnerability, and we have designated evacuation shelters for those that might be in harm's way from a storm surge or they feel that their house can't withstand the wind storm. And so those shelters are my first concern is that we need to make sure they have the backup power in the event of they all have backup power but only to keep the lights on in the central functions that doesn't include keeping the shelter itself cool. Our hurricane season is our summer months is during our summer months so in the event of a widespread and extended power outage we need to make sure we can keep those shelters cool. So that's a big line of defense and those are generally high schools in without throughout the county. Then secondly, we have at our park and library facilities. They've been designated as cooling centers where people can go during hot times of the day to cool off if they don't have the access to AC home. And those are often also serve as points of distribution in the aftermath of a hurricane or in prep of a hurricane for getting water and ice for, you know, notifying of services. So they serve multi functions already. Our goal with the resilience hub network is to take that to another level. These are already recognized trusted community facilities in neighborhoods that in the event of any kind of disaster is a place where people can congregate that can charge their phone. They could access water ice food. It can also serve the function in terms of preparation and education before any event. And in the event of this extended power outage and hot time, we would what we want to do is make sure they have the energy redundancy, ideally through solar power and a battery backup. Because again, we want to seek multiple benefits. We don't want to exacerbate our climate change problem with our resilient solutions. So, but to make sure that they have the backup power so that our residents if they don't have backup power and we have that widespread power outage, they have a place to go to cool off in their own neighborhood. And those shelters and hubs are they reality or are you still in planning. So our within the city of Miami when I was chief resilience officer we we created a resilience hub network plan, and they've already started to invest they've got a state grant to retrofit one part facility and then they're installing it as part of a new construction facility in another area of the city. At the county level, we partnered with our strong resilience center again on a planning grants with from the state of Florida. And so we're just kicking off that planning process for what which facilities would be the top priority for investments and what those design criteria really need to be. And I just remember that during, especially during Glasgow there was also a lot of talk about trees and the importance of trees clearly. And I, I read that in Miami's lower income mostly black and Latino neighborhoods tree cover is, or can be as little as 10% compared to around 40% in in upscale coastal areas. So, I mean, I know I'm a bit sharp now but does life and death depend currently on people's race and zip code. So it is very aligned with certainly income levels and we're a diversity throughout so the race system the city is not as correlated as it is just to income. And, but it's certainly, you know, an issue that we're recognizing, but the county has had a goal, we are our average tree canopy is 20%. Our goal was to get to 30%. In the last six years we've remained at 20%, which you could say is highly disappointing which it is but we also have had major tree losses from hurricanes and from our just increasing development overall so it's, you know, getting keeping maintaining 20% takes a lot of effort. Yeah, absolutely. So our goal now is, is to design a set of procedures, policies, etc that that really move us to increase particularly focusing on those areas that are 10% or less in our county. But there, there are often many challenges that come up with that these are often neighborhoods that don't have a lot of space, either in the right way or on the private land for trees, and we need to make sure they're made, you know, planted well, that they're the right tree, that they're not going to blow down in a windstorm and take a power line with them. And, and, and the, and the three we have the resources to maintain them, or the neighborhood has the resources to maintain them, because otherwise we're just, if the efforts are futile, you can't take care of that tree, if it can't thrive over time, you're losing the benefits, the multiple benefits of trees so it is. I think it could be just, you know, okay, let's plan a bunch of trees but we have to, there's a lot to negotiate in terms of where, what type of tree where that's placed, how it's surrounding pedestrian walkway and streets can accommodate it. I want to ask you about your budget, are you able to talk about it, whether there is really enough financial support that you can make an impact. Well, you know, my position was created as a, as this initially because mayor just wanted to get it going as soon as possible as a consulting position. We're now working on a permanent position with an assistant. And I've had a small budget, just to get this planning going and get some initial public education and emergency management enhancement response. And really, if my work is successful, it's really through the budgets of our Department of Transportation and Public Works, our housing and human services departments, and our HR departments, and our emergency management and parks. And it's really through my role is essentially a role of coordination and catalyst and accelerating the work that needs to be done through these larger departments with much more capacity than I would have in my particular office. So it's hard for me to answer that question because, because it is really through not only the all those departments I mentioned in the county but through our other city partners through our state health departments, and our nonprofit and university partners so it's really through increasing commitment for resources on all those If you think about, I mean, to have this role. Do you feel like a role model. I mean, shortly after your new job was implemented. We had Phoenix and a chief heat officer in Athens and Greece or in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Do you think there are more following. I know there are more following the Los Angeles City Council voted to hire a chief heat officer. And other cities and towns that have reached out for more information about how the position is set up and and what the responsibilities are. So I know there will be additional heat officers in other cities, which is to say you have to have a heat officer in order to address the issues. I would work very closely with our office of resilience and sustainability and and really in many cities. That is like New York has done great work on addressing heat. It's all gone through their offices of resilience and sustainability. So, so I think there are different ways. And I think that city can resource this work. Sometimes it can be through an emergency management department. But then, but the unique benefit of a chief heat officer is that singular focus on this particular issue and the ability to coordinate across departments. And the airs office. I think most countries have signed the, the UN climate agreement, including the US. Do you feel that just looking at Miami now and your work that you're addressing the roots of climate change enough, because from what you tell me I know you're fighting the heat and you help people and things like that. Is that parallel and equal efforts to. Yeah, to help the climate. Absolutely. In. First, I would say back in my role at city Miami, we not only had that climate adaptation plan, which we had to do first, because it was our immediate threat. But then the focus was on what's what's the carbon mitigation plan. And given that we are the tip of the spear in terms of vulnerability to climate change. We owe it to ourselves into the world to also demonstrate leadership in terms of carbon mitigation. And so we put that in place at the city of Miami. And the county has also released their climate action strategy and they have a whole team within the office of resilience focused on carbon mitigation. I, with the chief resilience officer for the county Jim Merley, and I were on a clean energy task force for our school district we have the fourth largest school district in the country here. And it is very large consumer of electricity and their bus network. This is a huge amount of diesel gas. They set a very ambitious goal of 100% clean energy in their buildings and their transportation by 2030. So we had to come help them come up with that plan we just presented that to their school board this month. So there is a deep commitment here towards carbon mitigation. As I mentioned earlier, that's why it's critical that the actions that I come up with also contribute towards that goal not not exacerbated. Yeah. Yeah. And I also recently your mayor announced a new action plan. I read a bit. Can you tell me what's in the action plan? The climate action plan? Yeah, I think it's called Thrive 305. Oh, the Thrive 305 plan. Yes, she did. So, so there is a big focus on overall resilience in that there's a big focus for, you know, broad priorities around protecting our environment, enhancing our economy, addressing equity issues and improving engagement. So that plan was developed with extensive engagement on priorities throughout our county of 2.7 million people. And so there's it's a broad plan around addressing public safety. We had some, you know, that uptick in our homicide rates. So there's a lot of concern around public safety, a lot around access to living wage jobs and equity issues, health equity as well. And then also the environmental work of carbon mitigation, protecting our biscuit bay and looking on the siblings overall. And how close do your work was business, was companies? So we, I was on the phone this morning and yesterday with various companies that are helping us to create innovations, whether it's to improve our data gathering network with sensors in various neighborhoods and different work sites, etc. To really understand the micro climates and how that, how that heat impacts us. Innovations in cool pavements, cool roofs, cool building materials. I talked to them about pilots for that. And then also around any innovations with building efficiency. So far from everything you were saying, it sounds really great. I wonder whether there's anything missing where you say we need to address factor ABC much more strongly or the national government needs to be more involved. It's an overall problem. Or can you manage on your own? Oh, I definitely cannot manage on my own. That is, I know. I'm not sure any of us can be honest. But you know, I need the national government's help and I have them at the table, whether it's improving our communication and warning systems through the National Weather Service. They're absolutely engaged and we're in discussion there. What does it mean? Can you talk a bit about that? Sure. So right now, the thresholds for the National Weather Service to issue a heat warning here, or a heat advisory first and then a heat warning is the thresholds or a heat index of 108 and then 113. Well, most hospitalizations and we rarely hit those levels. Most hospitalizations to heat related illnesses happen at levels far lower than that. And, you know, it could be even just over the index of 90, depending on how much that individual was exerting themselves and how vulnerable they are to heat. So we're working with them on what is an easy way to communicate different levels of risk so that people know today is a yellow day and that yellow day means you do this or tomorrow is going to be an orange day. So that means that you may, if you're going to work out, you probably don't want to work out during the hours of, you know, two, one to three and or make sure you take breaks every so often, drink this much water, etc. So that there's guidelines for people that we don't have to wait until it is that extreme emergency to communicate the risks. So that's something that we're trying to get. We're doing updated the first heat health vulnerability assessment for Miami Dade County. And that will help inform that work. So that's something that we're working on a pilot with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, which has the National Weather Service. So for that work. But we're, you know, we need the Occupational Safety and Health Administration through the Department of Labor to speed up the Biden administration has called for regulations guidelines on heat, but it can take a very long time for them to push that through, which is why we're trying to push the state legislation. So we need the federal government, we need their help with all the building retrofits that we need to do here. Certainly at the state level as well. We're working with the state, as I mentioned on the resilience hub network. We, as a metropolitan government, don't control all the cities within it at all, you know, levels so they need, we need to be in partnership with them. So it really takes, it does take a village to address this work. Yeah. Do you, do you think we need new national standards to in order to protect people in the longer term is your government doing enough to support the needs of its people. I think the current Biden administration is doing everything and they can push forward that agenda. It's been limited by Congress, its ability to do that and for instance the Build Back Better Bill that they've proposed, it's now getting cut back and have a lot of opportunities to expand housing retrofits, to expand tree planting, to expand healthy streets. That could be cut back to expand its data platforms, etc. So, you know, that could be cut back by Congress. So, there's, there has been a limitation as to what this administration can do. They're doing everything. I feel they're listening to us. They've reached out for more information on what they need to be doing. Certainly how they support each community, you know, our carbon mitigation challenge is a global challenge that should have global standards, national standards. Climate adaptation is very local and it affects communities very differently. And so that's much harder to come up with just one national standard on how you support that. I absolutely agree with you. This is the global standards, but we have everything in place. I mean, we have the United Nations Sustainable Development Gold, which they all signed in 2015. Now it's 2022. What do you reckon? If you carry on with all the enthusiasm and all the other stakeholders you have by your side, if you look ahead in 20 years time, how do you think life could look like in Miami? So, I am a firm believer that our biggest challenges also present great opportunities to rethink how we live, move and play in the city and work. And so I believe that if we can focus on how do we build a mobility network that promotes healthy living, that promotes access to jobs, that promotes pedestrian interaction, and that we concentrate our populations around areas that are higher elevation, that could have mixed use, mixed income. You know, there's great opportunity to rethink urban design and encourage communities that have improved quality of life and allow for our lower line areas, perhaps some of the lower line areas where we can't support the investment like Miami Beach, it's already so built up and there's, you know, great value in all of that real estate. Through that they can afford to elevate everything. Certain areas we're not going to have that level of taxpayer investment. So we need to allow those areas to turn more blue cream and concentrate our populations along higher ground where we can have strong transit infrastructure and really reduce both our carbon footprint but hopefully improve access to jobs and open space. When you think back, I saw that you studied environmental science at Barnard College in New York, which was probably great. How much did it prepare you for your current role? I think with an excellent preparation, if I had known that these jobs would have been available then I would have pursued them way back then after graduating. I think, you know, one, studying environmental science within the urban context of New York City was a hugely valuable education and two, and I think environmental science in and of itself as a discipline forces that interdisciplinary thinking, not only within the sciences themselves but also because to be a strong environmental scientist you have to have foundation in geology, biology, chemistry, really all the sciences. And but also you need to have a strong foundation in policy and economics and social psychology. So and that degree at Barnard recognized that and I was able to learn environmental policy through history. We had to look at problems through those interdisciplinary lenses and design solutions in that way. And I think that was just an outstanding training for what I do now. How do you think, how aware and awake are people in Miami to all the threats that are around them? We're pretty aware. It's sort of hard to deny both when when we get, you know, small floods on a Sunday day, or, you know, that, you know, as I mentioned, I've been here 25 years, I feel our summers are hotter and longer than they used to be. And I know that my peers know, you know, my fellow residents have felt the same. There's a general awareness, certainly, you know, with when the majority of our population is struggling every day to make ends meet. And so it's sort of not high on their priority list as a result. So that's the the the challenges that, you know, they're looking for food on the table, get their kids to school, make sure they can pay their bills and so the limit their capacity for focusing on these issues is more limited. After everything we talked about now, at the same time, and that's kind of a paradox, we have the property market, the prices rising in Miami. And we have the tech have kind of a love affair with Miami and the crypto enthusiasts are there and coming and coming and I think I even saw that they think it will be the next Silicon Valley. And how does it work? Do you understand it? Not fully. I mean, I understand the attraction to be here. Absolutely. For all the reasons I said earlier. And I love it here. I am highly invested in trying to make it work here. And I'm not alone in that front. It does. It does have some cognitive dissonance to see the level of excitement and growth when we are as vulnerable as we are. But I've also had meetings with large investment firms, real estate investment firms, which gain great confidence to see how much our local governments are working to address these issues. And that's helped, I think, continue to build that investment and I now need to wrap it up because my daughter is at the door. Okay. I think we covered most of the important issues and we all understood the importance of your role protecting Miami citizens from the heat. I wish you a lot of energy and even more optimism. And of course, thanks for taking the time talking to us. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today through global conversations like this that give me hope that we can do it if we stay focused and open to working together. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. You've been listening to a special English edition of DeGorsa Neustadt, a German podcast series by Zabilla Baden, in which she talks to pioneering leaders who are committed to making our world smarter, greener and fairer. For more information, please visit www.zabillabaden.com and the official site of the World Economic Forum. Thank you.