This tool is designed to guide Tribes through an extreme heat vulnerability assessment, providing easy access to projected extreme heat and related vulnerability data, and allowing Tribes to assess, rank, and identify strategies to address extreme heat in their communities. At the end of the process, the tool generates a community profile summarizing the extreme heat and vulnerability data, risk determinations, and suggested adaptation strategies. In addition, Tribes will be able to export a customizable extreme heat vulnerability assessment report designed to be integrated into climate change vulnerability assessments or adaptation plans.
Your community is encouraged to conduct its own community engagement process to understand the experiences and priorities of community members regarding extreme heat.
Please note: All fields are editable and you are encouraged to customize this tool for your needs.
About the tool:
The Interactive Exposures, Impacts, and Strategies Inventory (EISI) Tool for Extreme Heat (EISI for EH) Project is a collaborative pilot initiative led by the Pala Band of Mission Indians (Pala), Prosper Sustainably, and the Public Health Alliance of Southern California. This pilot project centers around the modification and integration of the EISI tool, a well-established mechanism for assessing climate-related risks, into an interactive, guided tool built on the California Healthy Places Index: Extreme Heat Edition (HPI: EHE) map platform. This project is funded through Round 1 and 2 of the Tribal Research Grant Program (TRGP), led by the California Energy Commission (CEC). The second round of funding allowed for the EISI for EH tool to develop a robust, fully customizable report feature to further support Tribes based on specific need and context related to heat exposures and impacts. Beyond the pilot phase, we aim to expand the EISI Extreme Heat Tool to incorporate additional climate exposures, such as drought, wildfire, and sea-level rise. If you are interested in supporting this work, please contact the Tribal Climate Health Project at info@tribalclimatehealth.org
This work builds on the Tribal Climate Health Project’s ten years of experience supporting Native American Tribes with adaptation planning, navigating the public health impacts of climate change, Tribal climate and health-informed training, data development, and general adaptation capacity building work. If you are interested in exploring other exposures and impacts and using the tool that helped inform this work, you can access the Exposures, Impacts, and Strategies Inventory (EISI) tool created by the Tribal Climate Health Project. The original and comprehensive EISI tool organizes climate-related information for Tribal communities and the latest version was updated in February 2024. This version can be downloaded on the Tribal Climate Health Project website or by clicking here.
Contacts:
Interested in learning more about the EISI Extreme Heat Tool and how it was developed? Have questions about exposures, impacts or other indicators?
Please contact Coline Bodenreider at cbodenreider@phi.org
For questions related to the Tribal Climate Health Project, please contact Shasta Gaughen at sgaughen@palatribe.com or Angie Hacker at ahacker@prospersustainably.com