Strengthening resilience to extreme heat: an Adelaide case study
What does extreme heat risk look like in everyday life?
This place-based case study explores how heat manifests in an urban context through a systems lens, examining the interconnected roles of housing and urban development, the natural environment, health, at-risk populations, workplaces and schools, disaster risk management and early warning systems, energy and critical infrastructure, and community awareness and cultural norms.
A fictional family narrative runs alongside the analysis, bringing systemic risks to life and illustrating how compounding pressures unfold during heat events. The report identifies locally relevant leverage points and offers transferable insights for cities seeking to strengthen heat resilience.
Key takeaways
- Extreme heat is a systemic urban risk that demands collective responsibility. Protecting communities requires coordinated action across government, industry, institutions and households — not just individual coping strategies.
- Critical systems are interconnected and vulnerable to cascading failure. During extreme heat, electricity demand surges while infrastructure weakens, increasing the risk of outages that disrupt cooling, water, healthcare, transport, communications and economic activity.
- Urban design, housing and ecosystems shape both exposure and protection. Poorly insulated buildings and heat-absorbing materials trap heat, while degraded ecosystems lose their ability to provide natural cooling through shade, evapotranspiration and water regulation — amplifying urban heat risk.
- Extreme heat disrupts livelihoods and education. Unsafe outdoor and poorly ventilated work environments undermine productivity and income, while overheated classrooms, sleep disruption and power failures interrupt learning and concentration.
- Heat remains under-recognised and under-integrated into disaster management. Often normalised as “business as usual,” heat lacks clear triggers for action, leaving health systems, livelihoods and education exposed to preventable disruption and loss.
This report forms part of the first Post-Event Review Capability (a systematic framework for analysing disaster events) on extreme heat, with the findings unfolding across three interconnected reports:
- Understanding Extreme Heat and Entry Points for Action
- Heat Stress at Work
- Strengthening Resilience to Extreme Heat: An Adelaide Case Study.
Together, they build a layered picture of how extreme heat risk is shaped, experienced and addressed.