What Heat Teaches Us About Treating Risk Differently?
By Aditya Sharma, Resilience AI
(Reflecting on the paper “Building Heat-Resilient Communities: A Collaborative Approach to Beat the Heat” by Haripriya Kesavan, Shradha Choudhary)
The Invisible Alarm
It started with a number: 45.8°C, the highest recorded indoor temperature inside a tin-roofed home in Vivekananda Camp located in Delhi, the capital of India.
That number was recorded in the data logger but remained unnoticed. But to me, as a communicator, tasked with telling the real stories behind risk, it felt like an emergency overlook. A signal we weren’t prepared to hear.
In a study, Resilience AI didn’t just explore heat as a climate trend. It understood heat as an experience lived, felt, endured. And in doing so, it uncovered a quiet but urgent truth: we may be measuring the wrong kind of temperature.
As temperatures climb, office buildings are at risk of pushing the limits of their cooling systems. The higher the ambient temperature, the greater the strain on local power grids to meet the increased demand for cooling. This, in turn, raises the carbon footprint of cities and contributes to climate change. On a micro level, the impact on workplaces is equally concerning. Extreme heat can hinder employee concentration, reduce productivity, and even affect health and safety.
Not All Heat Is Equal
The study makes a compelling case. One that I’ve thought deeply about as someone building narratives for disaster-tech. Heat doesn’t affect everyone the same way. It doesn’t even show up the same way for every household or neighbourhood.
This isn’t just about weather patterns. It’s about building material, urban density, social inequity, and daily realities. Where you live. How your home is built. What you have access to. These determine how heat enters and stays in your life.
One of the most critical findings from the paper was that indoor heat, not just outdoor temperatures, is the real hazard. And yet, most of our warning systems, policy triggers, and city planning tools rely on external weather stations.
In Vivekananda Camp, indoor temperatures were recorded as high as 12°C above the official outdoor readings. This means for many families, especially those living in tin-roofed informal housing, the indoors were more dangerous than the outdoors.
What If We’re Measuring the Wrong Risk?
This paper challenged me to ask, are we measuring the right risks? Is the existing area risk assessment helpful to beat the indoor heat?
It’s not enough to show hazard maps or generate scores. We need to make the risk feel real, understandable, and actionable to the people it impacts. Effective climate communication isn’t about forecasting fear. It’s about illuminating the overlooked. Roof types. Ventilation. Wall heat retention. Proximity to water access. These are not features of an area. They’re predictors of exposure, stress, and vulnerability of a home, school, office, transport station, food godown (warehouse).
From Data to Design-What Cool Roofs Taught Us
One of the most powerful parts of the study, from my point of view, was its technology-driven decision and frugal solutions.
At Resilience AI, the Resilience360™ disaster decision system detects risk at individual building level, buildings where people live, learn, earn. The multi-variate parametric analysis using AI and ML provides magnitude of risk inside a home. The system identified targeted homes in Vivekananda Camp, which are high level of risk to heat.
STS Global, a boutique sustainable architecture firm, developed and tested three cool roof prototypes, using low-cost, locally sourced materials like jute, bamboo, insulation sheets, and recycled plastic. They weren’t just designing for performance. They were designing for adoption.
The results were powerful:
- Model 1 and 2 reduced indoor temperatures by over 12°C
- Model 3, the most affordable, still showed a 19% reduction from the peak temperature of untreated roofs
These were not branded technologies. What’s scalable here isn’t just the structure. It’s the approach. A targeted structure and design ethic that values collaboration over control and function over finish.
Listening Systems, Not Just Early Warning Systems
Another standout insight from the paper was how the community created a heat early warning system without needing complex tech stacks.
Women volunteers were trained to read automated weather stations, log data manually, and translate those readings into color-coded flags that were displayed across the camp. WhatsApp groups were used to share real-time thresholds. Community boards displayed “Dos and Don’ts” for each alert level.
In a world where disaster tech often defaults to automated alerts and dashboards, this effort showed us what people-first resilience can look like. Technology supported the decision system. Human intelligence and social capital held it together.
From Pilot to Policy
The best research doesn’t sit in a PDF. It moves. This study has already shaped parts of the Delhi Heat Action Plan. It also offers a template for how disaster life cycle tools like Resilience360™ can enable slum-scale risk diagnostics that are compliant, replicable, and respected by institutions.
The project also aligns with national frameworks like the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Early Warning mandates, Ministry of Urban and Housing Affairs AMRUT urban upgrade roadmap and resilience planning directives.
Why You Should Read the Paper
Resilience AI help organizations move from “risk to resilience.” This study reframed that for me. Resilience isn’t just a model or platform. It’s a pact, a commitment between science and story, between data and dignity.
Read the full study “Building Heat-Resilient Communities: A Collaborative Approach to Beat the Heat”
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