Toronto neighbourhoods most at risk during extreme heat will help shape new tools for surviving it, under a two-year research project that has just landed federal funding.
The Toronto Climate Observatory has received an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for a project called Counter-Mapping Urban Heat: Critical Design for Equitable Climate Informatics, according to the Toronto Climate Observatory. The project is led by Robert Soden, with Laura Tozer of the University of Toronto Scarborough as co-investigator, and is being carried out with two community partners: Sprout, formerly known as Climate Resilient Communities, and The 519.
The stakes are high. Heat waves rank among Canada's deadliest climate hazards, and Toronto recorded more than 250 heat-related deaths between 2000 and 2020, the observatory said. Those deaths fall hardest on older adults, people with chronic illnesses, socially isolated residents, newcomers and people living in precarious housing.
Why current heat tools fall short
Cities have built up a growing toolkit of heat information: vulnerability maps, alert systems, dashboards and public health advisories. But the observatory argues these products are generally built by and for institutions, not for the people they are meant to protect.
Maps that rely on census figures and surface temperatures can pinpoint at-risk neighbourhoods, but miss the housing conditions, social ties and institutional failures that actually produce vulnerability, the organization said. Alerts that tell residents to stay cool and check on neighbours put the burden on individuals, even though the observatory's earlier research on severe weather and the COVID-19 pandemic found vulnerable communities already depend on extensive mutual support that official systems rarely acknowledge.
Where the work will happen
Over the next two years, the team will work alongside frontline community workers and residents in four Toronto neighbourhoods: Downtown East, Rexdale, Jane-Finch and St. James Town.
The project has three goals: document how heat-vulnerable communities experience extreme heat and what information and capacities they already rely on; evaluate the heat maps, visualizations and alerts now distributed by the City of Toronto and community organizations for relevance, accessibility and usability; and co-design new alternatives that help people keep themselves and their neighbours safe during heat events.
The researchers will draw on critical design, an approach that uses designed artifacts to expose hidden assumptions and imagine alternatives, combined with interviews, asset mapping and data journey mapping.
The results will take the form of a portfolio of design concepts, including neighbourhood heat guides built on local knowledge of cooling resources and support networks, templates for community-based heat alerts sent through trusted channels, and protocols for mutual check-ins during heat waves. The documentation will be written so practitioners elsewhere can adapt the ideas, and the project will wrap up with a cross-community event to map out how the results can be put into practice.
The grant builds on a workshop held with Sprout in March 2026, called Reimagining Heat Information in Toronto, and on the observatory's broader research into risk information and community responses during crises.
