Dive Brief: - A new data platform from the World Resources Institute maps urban heat risk block by block and models which cooling solutions — such as trees, shade structures or cool roofs — could have the biggest impact. - Cool Cities Lab, co-designed with city decision-makers and built on accessible open data, launched in March in more than 20 cities worldwide, including Boston and Atlanta. - WRI has built data sets that allow it to expand the tool’s reach to “any city in the world,” said Eric Mackres, senior manager, data and tools for WRI’s Ross Center for Sustainable Cities. “This is an attempt to democratize this information, make it more available to many more places.” Dive Insight: The U.S. experienced the hottest March on record this year, and meteorologists are predicting a super-sized El Niño climate pattern will increase temperatures worldwide in the coming months. “Extreme heat is a severe and growing problem,” Mackres said. “It’s a silent disaster, but most years it’s actually the largest environmental disaster in terms of impacts on people’s lives.” The way cities are built can concentrate heat into urban heat islands. This and the concentration of people into those areas increases the risks from extreme heat, Mackres said, “but we also know that how cities are built can be part of the solution.” With Cool Cities Lab, city officials can facilitate stakeholder discussions using data and visualizations, identify high-priority areas for action and design targeted interventions with measurable results. Officials can use the platform to estimate the cooling potential of heat-resilience interventions like trees, cool roofs and shade structures. It also offers tools for creating maps and visualizations for grant proposals and documents that can inform evidence-based policies and regulations. In Atlanta, WRI worked with a City Council member and the Smart