Page 57 - Mapping the Nation: Taking Climate Action

in the present while also devising ways to meet the climate- related challenges of the 21st century and beyond. GIS allows IPR Prague to view and analyze the city in both its street-level granularity and its bird's-eye view totality. Prague is particularly vulnerable to extreme heat. Compared with other European cities, it has more paved spaces, built-up areas, and industrial infrastructure—the kind of spaces that can create what are called heat islands. But Prague also contains a significant amount of green space and vegetation, the kind of areas that can offer respite from the heat. From a planning perspective, this tapestry of extremes presents a challenge, a puzzle to be solved so that Prague residents are equipped to deal with global warming. Cities Lead the Way When we think of humanity adapting to climate change, we tend to focus on the precarity of coastal communities dealing with sea level rise. The truth is that large cities—even those that are landlocked—are on the front lines of climate change adaptation. The large conglomerations of people and human development exacerbate the effects of rising temperatures. The economic and social diversity of cities means that certain communities feel the effects more than others. The sheer enormity of a city means these effects are themselves diverse, varying widely throughout the city. For these reasons, cities are increasingly taking proactive approaches to climate change that supersede national policies. In 2018, the Czech government declared that climate change mitigation would be a national priority, a year after Prague released its strategy document. "For the Czech government, it's always seemed like more theory than practice," said Jiří Čtyroký, director of spatial information at IPR Prague. "What Prague is doing fulfills the criteria of the national government but goes much further. We have an implementation strategy with really ambitious goals, including making Prague completely carbon neutral by 2050." Mapping Vulnerability Key to this strategy is a commitment to use data in a way that helps IPR Prague understand how climate change currently affects Prague, how these effects will evolve, and how to best develop the city to meet these challenges. Sensors throughout the city measure variables like temperature fluctuation, solar radiation, and humidity. "There are more droughts, less precipitation, and more tropical temperatures than ever before," Čtyroký said. "It makes the city streets and public spaces less livable and more stressful for people." But which streets and spaces? Which people? IPR Prague integrates information from the environmental sensors with health and demographic data. For instance, IPR staff can see heavy concentrations of young children and the elderly—two populations at increased risk from high temperatures. A study that compared the heat waves of 1994 and 2015 found that during the summer of 1994, mortality rates among the elderly increased at about the same rate as younger populations—yet, in 2015, they were significantly higher. The theory behind this shift is that positive socioeconomic changes since the 1989s Velvet Revolution had made those who were aged 64 years and under "less vulnerable to heat stress over time." But during the same 21-year period, the country's over- 65 population increased. They were, as a group, still very vulnerable to heat waves, and their greater number counteracted the gains made by younger groups. On balance, they were the reason the total mortality impact of the 2015 heat waves was greater than it had been in 1994. 56 Extreme Heat