Austin officials present Heat Resilience Playbook outlining 56 actions to shield vulnerable communities

Mark Coudaire, with the City of Austin Office of Sustainability and Resilience, presented the Heat Resilience Playbook and described it as a compendium of actions the city and partners are taking to reduce heat exposure in Austin.

The Playbook is intended as a catalog, not a plan with schedules or budgets. "It is not a plan. It doesn't have a timeline. It doesn't have a budget," Coudaire said, adding the document is meant to "elevate all the things the city is doing and would like to be doing to mitigate heat in the community." The city grouped 56 actions into three tiers — individual/health, neighborhood and citywide — and identified department “champions” for each strategy.

The Playbook is rooted in prior city climate work and community engagement. Coudaire said city staff began climate-impact work in 2017, produced a Climate Resilience Action Plan in 2018, and later used community sensor deployments and conversations — particularly in the eastern crescent — to map social vulnerability and heat exposure. He summarized recent temperature trends,…