New paper: highway expansion impacts on urban heat using Google Earth Engine

GeoFly Lab published a new paper that quantifies how highway capacity expansion relates to urban heat island patterns in the San Francisco Bay Area. This work was supported by a Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) grant.

Using Google Earth Engine, we analyze multi-year remote sensing products to map surface temperature patterns and compare areas with different levels of transportation infrastructure change. The goal is to provide an accessible, data-driven way to examine how large transportation investments can align with (or potentially amplify) heat exposure across neighborhoods.

In plain terms: when road capacity increases, land cover and traffic conditions can also change. Those changes may affect local heat conditions—especially during hot periods and in areas with limited shade or green space. Our results provide a framework for measuring these patterns consistently over time using open satellite data and scalable cloud computing.

This type of analysis can support transportation and planning discussions by connecting infrastructure decisions with environmental equity and public health considerations.