Mapping Scenarios and Estimating the Potential for Heat-Resilient Infrastructure in Cities

This research paper introduces a globally scalable, open-source framework designed to help cities map and quantify the potential for heat-resilient infrastructure. The framework utilizes a new high-resolution urban land-cover dataset called OpenUrban to generate implementation scenarios for passive cooling interventions such as trees, cool roofs, reflective pavements, and shade structures.

• The paper introduces OpenUrban, a high-resolution (1 m) urban land-use and land-cover (LULC) dataset created from free, global sources like OpenStreetMap, Overture Maps, and ESA WorldCover. It maps urban surfaces critical to heat, including buildings, roads, public open spaces, and parking lots, and has been validated at 93% accuracy in the United States and 83% globally across eight world regions and 16 cities.
• The framework generates three nested scenario levels to evaluate four passive cooling interventions: trees, cool roofs, reflective pavements, and shade structures. These levels include 'technical' (the maximum physically feasible), 'achievable' (benchmarked against the city's own best-performing areas), and 'program' (limited by specific policy goals).
• The framework produces two types of outputs: 'potentials', which are area-wide indicators of how surface characteristics like albedo, shade, or tree cover would change, and 'scenario maps', which are spatial simulations of where new infrastructure could be located.
• Designed to be city-agnostic and low-burden, the framework requires no local data inputs and relies on open-source code available on GitHub. It is integrated into the World Resources Institute's Cool Cities Lab and was developed with input from urban planners and officials in over 20 cities across North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). Mapping Scenarios and Estimating the Potential for Heat-Resilient Infrastructure in Cities. https://www.wri.org/research/mapping-scenarios-and-estimating-potential-heat-resilient-infrastructure-cities

Chicago

World Resources Institute. Mapping Scenarios and Estimating the Potential for Heat-Resilient Infrastructure in Cities. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/mapping-scenarios-and-estimating-potential-heat-resilient-infrastructure-cities.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=Mapping Scenarios and Estimating the Potential for Heat-Resilient Infrastructure in Cities |url=https://www.wri.org/research/mapping-scenarios-and-estimating-potential-heat-resilient-infrastructure-cities |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendmapping, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{Mapping Scenarios and Estimating the Potential for Heat-Resilient Infrastructure in Cities}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/mapping-scenarios-and-estimating-potential-heat-resilient-infrastructure-cities}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }