The Challenge
Heatwaves are becoming more frequent, longer lasting, and more intense across many Australian cities. At the same time, urban development continues to increase the concentration of heat-retaining surfaces such as roads, rooftops, and paved areas.
However, urban heat is not distributed evenly.
Some neighbourhoods experience higher thermal stress due to differences in canopy cover, urban form, and local environmental conditions. These areas often overlap with communities that are more vulnerable to heat impacts, including older residents, young children, and socioeconomically disadvantaged populations.
This project set out to explore how cities can move beyond individual heat or canopy maps and instead establish monitoring systems that:
• remain consistent through time
• support repeat reporting
• allow comparison across years
• measure intervention outcomes
• help prioritise investment spatially
The Solution
The Adelaide pilot brought together heat, canopy, and vulnerability data into a repeatable climate-risk monitoring framework.
The work combined satellite-derived land surface temperature, AI-based canopy classification, and social vulnerability indicators to show where heat exposure, limited canopy, and vulnerable populations overlap.
Rather than producing a one-off heat map, the pilot demonstrated how these layers can be generated through repeatable workflows to support future comparison, reporting, and intervention tracking over time.
The Results
The pilot produced a set of linked monitoring outputs showing how heat, canopy, and vulnerability interact across metropolitan Adelaide.
Key outputs included:
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a Heat Susceptibility Index showing where urban heat consistently concentrates
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a Residential Heat Exposure Index identifying where residents are exposed to elevated heat conditions
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a Social Vulnerability Index highlighting populations with reduced resilience to heat impacts
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a Residential Heat Risk Index combining heat exposure and social vulnerability
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canopy distribution and percentage-cover layers across seven metropolitan Adelaide local government areas
One of the most significant findings was that approximately 44.8% of residents fell within moderately high to extremely high heat-risk classes, highlighting the extent of heat exposure across metropolitan Adelaide.
However, the canopy data also showed substantial local variation: Walkerville exceeded 30% canopy cover, while Port Adelaide Enfield recorded 12%. At a finer scale, nearly half of all Mesh Blocks had less than 15% canopy cover.
Together, these outputs show where elevated heat exposure, limited canopy, and vulnerable populations overlap, helping demonstrate how repeatable monitoring can support more targeted urban greening and climate adaptation planning.
Want to learn more? Read the full technical breakdown of the methodology we employed here.
