Pamela Berkowsky is a former Pentagon and state government official with expertise in disaster preparedness and response. She has watched with interest the recent establishment of the Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance, an international coalition that aims to raise public awareness of increasing heat risks. The top priority of the new alliance is to name and rank heat waves in order to draw public attention to extreme heat events in the same way hurricanes and winter storms are named. Naming heat waves would allow leaders to better protect citizens and prepare their communities. The alliance also seeks to improve heat-related data collection and create public insurance mechanisms to help cities fund heat mitigation and response measures.

1. Pamela Berkowsky
Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance Recommends the Naming of Heat Waves

2. Introduction
Pamela Berkowsky is a former Pentagon and state government official with expertise in disaster preparedness and response.
She served in senior Pentagon positions during the Bush I and ClintonAdministrations is president of Blue Sapphire Strategies,
a boutique public affairs business consultancy.As a Senior Executive Defense Consultant to the South Florida DefenseAlliance
(https://www.southfloridadefensealliance.org/about-us-1), Pamela Berkowsky focuses on defense innovation and resiliency
issues, including the impacts of climate change and sea level rise on U.S. military installations, personnel and operations. She is
a founding member of inWEM, the International Network ofWomen in Emergency Management.

3. A development she has watched with interest is the recent establishment of the Extreme Heat ResilienceAlliance, an
international coalition built by the nonpartisanAdrienneArsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center at the
Atlantic Council. In recognition of the need to raise public awareness of the increasing severity of and risks from
excessive heat events, naming and ranking heat waves is the top priority of the new alliance.According to the US
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), extreme heat is the weather event responsible for the highest
number of deaths across the country. Naming and categorizing heat waves in the same way we name hurricanes and
winter storms would draw public attention to extreme heat events and provide leaders the ability to better protect and
prepare their constituents.TheAlliance also seeks to improve heat-related municipal cost assessments and public health
data collection, and to create public insurance mechanisms to assist cities in accessing funding and resources for heat
wave mitigation and response measures.