Heat at the edge of the city.

Pergamino sits in the heart of Argentina's agricultural belt, where summer temperatures regularly exceed 40°C. The city of 110,000 has grown rapidly, with new peripheral neighborhoods often lacking tree cover and green space. Municipal staff knew heat was a problem but lacked block-level data to prioritize interventions.

The 2022-2023 heat waves hit hard — emergency room visits spiked, and residents in newer neighborhoods reported indoor temperatures exceeding outdoor readings. The municipal environmental team, led by Valeria Pereyra and Federico Gazaba, wanted evidence to support their climate action plan but didn't have the technical capacity to process satellite data.

We embedded with the municipal GIS and environmental teams for four months. The work had three phases:

Remote sensing analysis: Using Landsat thermal bands and Sentinel-2 vegetation indices, we mapped land surface temperature at 30m resolution across the urban footprint. We correlated temperature anomalies with land cover, building density, and vegetation presence.

Field validation: In November 2025, we conducted ground-truth temperature surveys across 12 neighborhoods, measuring air and surface temperatures at 50+ locations. This validated the satellite-derived patterns and identified microclimates not visible from space.

Integration with planning: We overlaid heat exposure with census vulnerability data (age, income, housing quality) to create a composite heat risk index. The results fed directly into the municipal Climate Action Plan, adopted in December 2025.

The analysis identified three priority intervention zones where high heat exposure overlaps with vulnerable populations. The municipal council adopted the Climate Action Plan in December 2025, with specific budget allocations for:

• Urban tree planting in identified heat islands (2,000 trees by 2027)
• Cool roof pilot program for public buildings
• Heat early warning system integration with municipal emergency services

Federico Gazaba presented the methodology at the provincial "Decidir con datos" webinar series, sharing the approach with 40+ Buenos Aires municipalities. The code and methodology are open source, and two other Argentine cities have begun adapting the analysis.