A team of 42 trained volunteers spread throughout an 80-square-mile area of the region on July 13th with special equipment to gauge temperatures and humidity data in the City of Framingham and towns of Ashland, Natick, and Holliston.

The effort coordinated by Framingham State University's Christa McAuliffe Center for Integrated Science Learning is part of the 2023 National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) Urban Heat Island Mapping Campaign. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has provided funding to Climate Adaptation Planning and Analytics (CAPA) Strategies to support campaigns for communities in 2023.

The McAuliffe Center's proposal was one of just 18 selected in 14 states across the country and in one international city. Data collection took place using mobile and stationary sensors. That data will be used to create urban heat island (UHI) maps and potentially identify overlaps among UHIs and disadvantaged demographics in Framingham and MetroWest communities.

"We have been blown away by the support for this important project," says Dr. Irene Porro, Director of the McAuliffe Center. "It really is a community effort."

With the increasing regularity of extreme weather and climate-related hazards across MetroWest, local communities have identified extreme heat and higher temperatures as a top hazard to vulnerable residents in their communities.

The data gathered in July will enable officials to generate policy recommendations to promote long-term, equitable solutions. The final product of the community science field campaigns is a set of high-resolution air temperature and humidity data, and a report by CAPA Strategies that provides a detailed analysis of distribution of heat in the morning, afternoon and evening. Interactive, high resolution web maps of the modeled air temperature and heat index are also provided.

"The Urban Heat Island Mapping Campaign is a great example of how communities and individuals can come together and proactively prepare for rising temperatures," said Sasha Shyduroff, Senior Clean Energy and Climate Planner with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC).

MAPC works with cities and towns in the Greater Boston region to increase access to cooling resources, reduce urban heat islands, improve healthy housing, and make investments to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

"Heat mapping is an important step one, as temperatures can fluctuate block to block and street to street – we're glad to help these communities take a strategic approach to data collection and stress its relevance for implementing policies and programs," said Shyduroff.