Kelsey Mize | 2026 I.S. Symposium
Name: Kelsey Mize
Title: Remote Sensing as a Policy Entrepreneur? A Multiple Streams Analysis of Urban Heat Island Mitigation
Majors: Political Science; Urban Studies
Advisors: Jeffrey Lantis and Hamed Goharipour
Cities are getting hotter at a rapid pace due to urbanization, heat-absorbing materials like concrete, and climate change. This leads to Urban Heat Islands (UHIs), where cities experience higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas. To better understand and address this issue, researchers use remote sensing (RS), satellite-based technology that tracks land surface temperatures, green space changes, and heat patterns over time. My interest in this topic began during my freshman year, when I became drawn to disaster policy and how cities respond to environmental risks like extreme heat. That curiosity led me to focus my Independent Study on UHIs and ways to reduce their impact. While studying abroad in Greece, I was introduced to remote sensing and was struck by how powerful yet underutilized it is in public policy. This inspired me to explore how data-driven tools like RS can influence real-world decision-making. This project examines how remote sensing data affects policy development using the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF), a theory that explains how policies gain attention and move forward. MSF suggests that change happens when three streams鈥攖he problem, possible solutions, and political conditions鈥攃ome together at the right moment. Using a content analysis of eight policy documents from United States and European Union case studies, I found that cities using more remote sensing data tend to better define heat as a policy problem and propose more targeted solutions. However, the relationship between data use and policy action is complex and not always direct. The next steps for possibly continuing this research include expanding the study to more cities, exploring how RS can be more effectively communicated to policymakers, and applying MSF to other urban challenges beyond heat mitigation.
Posted in Symposium 2026 on May 1, 2026.
