Meeting on 2026-04-22 at 09:00 AEST

[carlhiggs]

Attendees: @healthysustainablecities/ghsci-software-working-group --- @carlhiggs (Chair), @shiqin-liu, @MelanieLowe, @eugenrb, Luz Itzel Valdeolivar Hernandez, Juan Ernesto Dias Noguez, @ryn-trnr

This was the first session of our re-convened region-rotating meeting series for the year, hosted in Oceania.

Actions

• @shiqin-liu @rschifan @gboeing to coordinate and send out meeting series invites for mid-May (Europe?) and mid-June (Americas?)
• @ryn-trnr we'd love you to invite us to attend your PhD milestone :)

Agenda / minutes

Team news

• @carlhiggs shared update on GHSCI-Policy, which now supports generating and editing policy reports online from a completed policy checklist Excel file. There is a proof-of-concept implementation of completing a checklist online, and next step is to enable reports to be generated from that step.
• There have been some recent updates to (GHSCI , in addition to routine software patches: updated 1000 Cities Challenge reporting templates; refinement of EarthEngine indicator workflow (a bit more robust, and perhaps quicker); thanks @ryn-trnr-
• we discussed some funding proposal options, and @eugen Resendiz Bontrud will be reaching out about this (one closes early May, very soon!); we'll discuss via e-mail
• @carlhiggs started a repo for city case studies; the idea is, they could be on a branch while in development (eg Mexicali), and once finalised brought in to city-specific folders of resources of the main branch to provide examples (possibly tutorials, with links for users to access data externally) of how users might configure cities for their needs. I have an external example of this for Wellington , but it would be nice to bring these (at least the configuration/prose aspects) together with version control

Scheduling

There was group concensus that monthly rotation of regional hosting is good; we'll continue this (see actions).

@rschifan advised that he plans to re-commence work on the next generation GHSCI software in coming month, and could update on this at the next session (perhaps he could host? I believe @gboeing may be visiting Turin at that time too?).

Group reframing

We briefly discussed the reframing of the working group as 'Technical', so as to better encompasss both software and spatial indicator sides (respective co-leads, Carl/Rossano, and Shirley/Geoff). People seemed supportive of this, however @shiqin-liu made a good point that the word 'technical' should not overshadow research contributions --- in particular, we agreed that these meetings should provide an opportunity for us to discuss and share what we've been working on, and float new research and evidence linkage/generation ideas.

As an aside, perhaps the public recording of minutes is a barrier to this at times, or at least, they do not always necessarily capture cutting edge things we are working on --- would it be better to circulate these just by e-mail or are you happy with it here for public posterity? let me know if you have strong feelings

Cross-promotion

@carlhiggs suggested @shiqin-liu and @MelanieLowe / @EHinckson might like to discuss some kind of cross-promotion partnership with the Accessibility Observatory given shared interests in active transport, and Shirley's role and expertise there.

Policy Bridge update

@eugenrb provided an update on the Policy Bridge project, w/ interns/students now contributing, reviewing existing methods and tools, and work w/ policy group to identify keywords and concepts. There is a plan to organise a workshop for ICUH later in the year.

Global Urban Heat Vulnerability Index

@ryn-trnr provided an update on his PhD research, with an upcoming milestone in June; he will be extending methods he has developed for evaluating urban heat risk indicators and standards.

Thermal Comfort

@eugenrb updated on work she is undertaking with @rschifan and Yang Ye on street level intervention through the Reimagina Urbano platform to address thermal comfort in extreme conditions; @carlhiggs noted that he with Yang Ye, Keun Hee Lee, Alysha Livera, @MelanieLowe and others prevoiusly were investigating methods for street level walkability audits in diverse contexts drawing on computer vision methods as a side project to GOHSC --- we ran out of scope to complete this project at the time and missed out on a few proposals that would have continued it, however, it is still on my to do list to pick up and finish this work! (one day I'll have a research proposal that lands...). In the mean time, excited to hear your advancing this Eugen, and happy if any of our previous work / advice received from our advisory board can inform efforts.

Eugen introduced her colleague Itzel to the team, a researcher with natural language processing and large language model development/tuning. Great to meet you Itzel!

Proposed routine agenda

In the invite, I proposed this as a fall-back 'standing agenda' --- and as per our conversation, the discussion with @shiqin-liu here absolutely can include research and invited presentations; the chairs can organise as they wish :)

• Technical (software/spatial/funding) and other updates
• Focused discussion(s) on agreed topics
• Next steps / specific actions