Heatwaves are getting longer, hotter and more frequent, with the largest impacts occurring in our cities due to the urban heat island effect. Heatwaves negatively affect the community in different ways, placing acute stresses on the community and the ecosystems on which we rely on, and reducing the liveability of our city.

Melbourne Water owns 33,000 ha of land across the Port Phillip and Western Port region. Mosaic Insights, with Alluvium, was engaged to identify the full range of urban cooling opportunities on the estate and create pipeline of projects for Melbourne Water. The pipeline is critical to moving the Urban Cooling Program towards its aim of transforming 30 ha of public land into shade and cooling hubs in the Melbourne metropolitan area by 2021.

Our approach brings together human insights from Melbourne Water staff and advanced spatial analytics to identify sites that will be transformed into urban forest and irrigated cool spots.