Welcome to Heatshed

This is a newsletter about how we plan for and govern extreme heat, written for the people who do that work: city and county staff, agency leads, policymakers, and the researchers and reporters who follow them. It’s roughly monthly, usually short, and always free. If you’re new, start with my first post, which explains what a heatshed is: the regional area across which extreme heat has to be governed, the way a watershed is for water.

About Ladd Keith, Ph.D.

I’m a climate planner researching heat planning, policy, and governance to help communities, regions, and nations build heat resilience. I work with policymakers from city halls to international agencies to write the playbook for planning and governing heat. I’m an Associate Professor at the University of Arizona, where I direct the Heat Resilience Initiative. My definition of heat governance is used in NOAA and NIHHIS's Maturity Model for Heat Governance and the UN’s Extreme Heat Risk Governance Framework and Toolkit.

Read more about my work on my website.

A note on AI

Heatshed is where I think in public and where I experiment with AI. I use it to draft, edit, and critique ideas here, deliberately, as part of what this newsletter is for. The arguments, the evidence, and the judgment calls are mine, mistakes included.