News - Heat Policy Innovation Hub

The Duke Heat Policy Innovation Hub will spend the next two years developing an interactive, web-based tool to help policymakers plan for extreme heat, especially in rural and coastal communities. “We have been so focused, and for good reason, on the health impacts of heat,” but heat’s impact on the economy is “going to have much bigger consequences than we’ve appreciated so far,” hub director Ashley Ward told Coastal Review.

Duke's Heat Policy Innovation Hub will receive $500,000 in federal funding to advance heat action through a two-year project. The hub will partner with the National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) to map district-level heat impacts across sectors, inform heat policies, assess heat risks in rural and coastal communities and facilitate private sector collaboration on heat.

 

World leaders gathered in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November for the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP29—and Duke University experts and students were on the scene.

Several Duke experts are attending COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, to share insights, advance collaborative initiatives and network. They are accompanied by 17 students who are getting an up-close view of how international climate policy moves forward.

The Heat Policy Innovation Hub at Duke University convened more than 100 researchers, policymakers and corporate and community leaders in June to identify ways to make communities more heat resilient. A new Nicholas Institute report captures insights shared during conversations around three core themes at the inaugural HeatWise Policy Partnership Summit

Nineteen individuals and teams were recognized Thursday with Climate Commitment Leadership Awards at the annual Duke Climate Commitment Celebration event. Award recipients included Nicholas Institute experts Kay Jowers, Lydia Olander, Ashley Ward and Katie Warnell.

Ashley Ward joins 97.9 The Hill’s "News on the Hill" program every other Thursday to comment on the latest climate news.

Speaking to WUNC for its Scorched Workers series, Jordan Clark, senior policy associate at the Duke Heat Policy Innovation Hub, pointed to local research that will help groups in North Carolina provide appropriate resources to outdoor workers and other communities vulnerable to extreme heat. But first, Clark said it's vital for people to take heat seriously. "It's an invisible threat you can't see," he said.

According to Copernicus, the EU agency that tracks global warming, extreme heat in 2024 will likely break records. “We’re talking about ecosystem change on a global scale that’s going to affect all of us,” Ashley Ward, director of the Duke Heat Policy Innovation Hub, told The New York Times. “Our energy systems, built environment, and medical services were never built with this type of temperature regime in mind.”

Small towns at risk from climate change need better data to become more resilient. Duke Today profiled a team of Duke students who spent 10 weeks this summer working with the Town of Creswell and the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency to understand the flood issues some state residents face. The project, led by Nicholas Institute experts Lydia Olander and Francis Bouchard, was part of the Climate+ summer research program.