Engineering office Amsterdam working on heat stress simulations

“As Ingenieursbureau Amsterdam, it is our job to provide the right advice on climate adaptation within public spaces during spatial-development, maintenance and redevelopment projects. It is part of our policy to make – and keep – the city of Amsterdam climate-adaptive. This covers several aspects such as flooding, water safety, heat stress and drought. We already have various tools at our disposal for our consultancy work and we recently purchased the Tygron Platform. It allows us to model heat stress in the city centre and that works really well for us,” says Govert ter Mors, Consultant Climate Adaptation at IB Amsterdam.

Due to climate change and urbanization, the perceived temperatures in cities can reach extreme levels on a hot summer’s day, causing health problems and even deaths. Therefore, it is necessary to include urban cooling in city designs wherever possible to offer citizens some relief on the hottest days of the year.

To monitor heat stress, the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) is one organization that has developed a method for measuring and mapping heat based on the perceived temperature. This method takes account of various weather conditions as well as the local spatial situation, the use of land and the positioning of buildings and trees.