The Heat and Air Quality Resilience Project (HAQR) is San Francisco’s first comprehensive initiative to identify and address the public health impacts of extreme heat and wildfire smoke in San Francisco and the conditions that may exacerbate those impacts. The Heat and Air Quality Implementation Plan represents two years of the Heat and Air Quality Resilience Project working with community, public, private and academic partners. This plan establishes a framework to address current local extreme heat and wildfire smoke events while preparing for future ones.

The objectives of the Heat and Air Quality Implementation Plan are to:

• Identify extreme heat and wildfire smoke as significant and inequitable health threats.
• Define a San Francisco resilient to the health impacts of extreme heat and wildfire smoke.
• Develop staff-level, leadership-level, and community-level consensus on the strategies and actions necessary to build that resilient San Francisco.
• Facilitate the short, medium, and long-term implementation of the strategies necessary to build that resilience across San Francisco.

Implementation plan strategies are organized by Resilience Pathways. Resilience Pathways refer to the mechanism that connects a specific strategy to increases in community resilience to extreme heat and/or wildfire smoke. The Resilience Pathways in this document are:

1. San Francisco’s buildings are adapted to reduce exposure to extreme heat and poor air quality.
2. San Francisco’s exterior built and natural environments are adapted to reduce exposure to extreme heat and poor air quality.
3. San Francisco is made more resilient to extreme heat and wildfire smoke through equitable emergency preparedness, response, and resilience actions.
4. San Francisco is made more resilient to both current and future extreme heat and wildfire smoke events through City services that can predict and adapt to climate-related stressors.

The Office of Resilience and Capital Planning worked with Public Works and the Department of Public Health to map a combination of environmental and health equity data to identify priority zones for future green infrastructure efforts. The results can be found by clicking the PDF above and a GIS layer can be found on DataSF.

This information can be used by public agencies to support grant applications, funding requests, and policymaking. It can also be a resource for community organizations for fundraising, advocacy, or education efforts.