University of arizona - Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environmental and Social Justice

This project seeks to better define social vulnerability to climate and the intersection of acute impacts and chronic conditions that further amplify these vulnerabilities. This project aims to develop climate services, build collaborative research partnerships, and engage regional stakeholder networks. Current activities focus on energy equity and thermal comfort in Tucson neighborhoods and developing improved characterizations of urban heat and air quality maps.

Collaborators from SERI and BARA focus on household experiences of thermal comfort, cooling infrastructure, and resulting behavior. CLIMAS researchers focus on assessing the role of neighborhood and regional patterns on thermal comfort, the role of long-term climate change) and investments in and inequitable distribution of buffering infrastructure. Expanding on previous work that views vulnerability as the accumulation of negative characteristics commonly associated with location (e.g., SOVI) or climate vulnerability, this research seeks to understand how vulnerability relates to lack of access to systems, more than the failure of those systems.

Extreme heat is a key public health risk in the adjacent cities of El Paso, TX, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and Las Cruces, NM. Projected temperature changes, combined with the urban heat island effect and regional poverty, expose urban areas with high vulnerabilities to heat-health risks. This project increases preparedness and capacity to adapt to extreme high temperatures and heat waves in Rio Grande/Bravo basin border cities through several approaches: identifying key heat-health parameters and target populations for heat-health early warning; determining a calendar of climate- and weather-related public health decisions; assessing capacity for coordinated heat-health early warning; and facilitating discussions toward developing a community of practice and mutual learning within a network of regional cities. The project advances frameworks for a National Integrated Heat Health Information System and initiatives within the Global Framework for Climate Services. For more information, click here.

This project emphasizes network development in the Sonora-Arizona border around environmental risks and air quality issues, small scale computing and technology, and small-scale solar feasibility. A possible outcome is to inform decisions about community solar prospects in Nogales, Sonora, such as a shared solar bank that multiple NGOs could use for power. Ongoing participation and presence are requisite parts of building and sustaining collaborative partnerships. The Covid-19 pause in travel shows how things begin to fade a little, although we are maintaining contact with the network through email, WhatsApp, and texting.

La EcoCasa en Nogales, Sonora website aggregates recent work on solar and sensor technology, as well as more than 10 years of previous work in this network of partners. It summarizes information about the feasibility and capacity for solar power in Nogales and the role of sensor technology in tracking environmental risks https://nogalesecocasa.arizona.edu/.