Paris’s metropolitan area is home to over 12.4 million inhabitants. This continental region is shaped by low-latitude plains and plateaus. It has a temperate oceanic climate with mild winters and warm summers.
The area faces the urban heat island effect, a situation in which the average temperate in a city is higher than in others nearby due to the urban area infrastructure material that absorbs sunlight and stores large thermal masses. This situation gives rise to recurring and concerning extreme heat in the summer.
I4C will combine the urban climate response with urban planning to guide mitigation strategies for addressing urban heat island impacts. It will do so by co-assessing health impacts and stakeholder needs for urban planning based on existing knowledge. High-resolution regional climate simulations will be performed. This will be done by coupling CPRCM AROME to the urban canopy model TEB, which enables (1) to deal with urban effects in interaction with local climate and (2) to calculate some inline impact indicators (such as heat stress, energy consumption and Urban heat Island-UHI). These indicators will be combined with socio-demographic and epidemiological data to assess health risks. A short-term risk assessment will be entailed to support adaptation decisions. It will rely on developing new urban climate services that address stakeholder needs, to support prevention and guide urban planning.