Increasing incidence of events of extreme heat – higher temperatures and longer
spells of higher temperatures – have been a matter of concern for institutions of
urban governance for the past decade. In India heat is largely understood in terms of disaster management framework. Governmental response has been limited to metropolitan regions and in a more diffused manner across large regions. The datasets with which such plans are designed are at a scale where local specificity is completely missing. These plans are often spatially blind and unable to respond to local specificity in terms of resources and mitigation practices. Solutions are imagined within the binary of state and market with no room for developing enabling tools for grassroots initiatives. For these reasons, we’ve put together a course for understanding extreme heat in informal settlements which focusses on ways of thinking about heat at the level of informal settlements.

Find detailed Information on the course here.

Find the Instruction Manual for the course below.

Research supporting this post was supported by funding from the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC), UK Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) for the project, Cool Infrastructures: Life with Heat in the Off-Grid City (Award No: ES/T008091/1).