Today, the Department of Commerce and NOAA announced $200,000 in funding to support extreme heat preparedness and response planning as part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. This funding is supporting communities at a critical time — 2023 was the hottest year on record globally, and July 22, 2024, was Earth’s hottest day on record.
These funds will award prize money to up to 10 communities for developing manuals used to run simulated emergency drills called heat tabletop exercises. The situation manuals will outline plans to bring together community-based organizations, tribal, local, state governments and other collaborators to simulate and evaluate emergency heat response efforts with a goal of planning for long-term resilience.
“Since 2015, NOAA has provided helpful heat planning resources and worked with communities on local heat resilience efforts,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D. “This prize challenge is the next step in making our support more accessible to a greater number of communities.”
The application window is now open and runs through November 15, 2024, for the following prize challenge:
- Heat Tabletop Exercise Design Challenge: The National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) and NOAA’s Regional Collaboration Network (RCN) invite local governments, in close collaboration with community leaders and organizations, to develop heat tabletop exercise situation manuals describing realistic extreme heat scenarios they can use to test and evaluate their heat response plans. Up to 10 winning communities with the best situation manuals will receive prizes of at least $20,000.
NIHHIS recently released two new free, online heat planning guides that can help communities applying for this prize challenge:
- The Introduction to Heat Tabletop Planning and Coordination guide describes the steps and timeline necessary for communities to develop and run a heat tabletop exercise.
- The Maturity Model for Heat Governance guide is a framework that leaders and decision-makers can use to assess their capacity to successfully manage heat risk and track their progress toward building heat resilience.
New National Heat Strategy to support proactive heat response planning
Today, the interagency NIHHIS also released a new National Heat Strategy for 2024-2030, which will aid federal agencies in developing science-based solutions and improving resources, communications and decision-making related to hazardous heat.
“Extreme heat is the leading weather-related cause of death in the United States,” said Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Deanne Criswell. “This first-of-its-kind National Heat Strategy will ensure that the federal family is working in lockstep to help communities build a more heat-resilient nation.”
The strategy facilitates proactive coordination around heat planning, response and resilience. The federal departments and agencies involved in developing this strategy recognize the impact of heat on the health and well-being of humans, animals and ecosystems, as well as the related economic and societal consequences.
“The National Heat Strategy provides a blueprint for a robust and equitable approach to protecting everyone in the country from the growing threat of heat-related illness and death,” said U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Rachel Levine. “Grounded in principles of equity and environmental justice, the strategy recognizes the connections between health and well-being and the need to address the threat of heat not just to our health, but to the economic and social infrastructure our health depends on.”
Federal agencies are already taking steps that advance the goals established in the strategy. This includes establishing two new Centers of Excellence to work with local communities on collaborative heat monitoring and decision-making, releasing the experimental HeatRisk tool and the Heat and Health Index, coordinating urban heat island campaigns, holding regional heat workshops and heat tabletop exercises, developing heat governance resources and conducting heat safety awareness social media campaigns.
The strategy builds on ongoing efforts by the 29 NIHHIS federal departments and agencies, led by NOAA, FEMA, HHS and its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Biden-Harris Administration. The goal is to tackle extreme heat and build climate resilience across the United States. Information about these activities and additional resources to help prepare for extreme heat can be found at heat.gov.
NIHHIS projects in the works
In 2023, NIHHIS and the NOAA Regional Collaboration Network supported heat tabletop exercises in Miami, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Charleston, South Carolina, through NOAA’s Building Equitable Resilience to Extreme Heat pilot project. These communities have used the results of their tabletop exercises to identify assets and needs in their action plans so they can prioritize actionable steps to reduce heat risk.
This year, NIHHIS will support additional tabletop exercises in Oklahoma City and Philadelphia. Awardees of the Heat Tabletop Exercise Design Challenge will join this growing group of communities in using tabletop exercises to better understand, prepare for and respond to extreme heat events in their communities.
Visit NOAA’s Inflation Reduction Act website to learn about current and future funding opportunities.
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