KayCie Gravelle | Fulcrum Staff
Summer in Ottawa can get downright scorching, especially in the more industrial parts of the city. In order to more closely identify the city’s hot spots and cool them down, Ottawa Public Health has launched a “heat-island mapping” project.
The project will be especially beneficial to those who are particularly vulnerable to heat-related illness—namely young children, the elderly, and homeless people.
Peter Keizer, a University of Ottawa geography graduate, has been working to map the city’s built-up areas to see just how hot they get in comparison to the more rural areas, and find ways he and his team can cool these areas down.
Among the plans for cooling down densely populated urban areas are using lightly coloured construction materials to make surfaces in these areas more reflective, and increasing the amount of vegetation cover by planting more trees and creating rooftop gardens.
