The MinusFifteen Project

The world is grappling with the escalating effects of climate change and every city faces its own unique challenges. For Lahore, Pakistan, the birthplace of my husband Amir and myself, the summers have grown progressively hotter, posing a not-insignificant threat to the well-being of its residents and the city’s future. As partners at Global Venture Bridge and lifelong Lahoris, Amir and I don’t want to just sit idly by while our beautiful city suffers. Instead, we want to do what little we can by launching The MinusFifteen Project, an initiative aimed at mitigating the impact of climate change in Lahore.

The MinusFifteen Project represents our commitment to making a real difference in the fight against climate change. By collaborating with local partners, international experts, and concerned citizen volunteers, we want to implement sustainable solutions that will help reduce Lahore’s average summer temperature by 15°F over the next decade. This ambitious goal requires a creative approach and must include green infrastructure, renewable energy, community engagement, and data-driven decision making.

The heart of the MinusFifteen Project is a comprehensive monitoring platform that will collect and analyze environmental data from across Lahore. We will deploy a vast array of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors throughout the city, measuring temperature, humidity, air quality, and other key parameters at a granular level. This sensor network will be complemented by data from drones and satellites, providing a complete view of Lahore’s urban heat island effect. By integrating and analyzing this data, we want to identify the city’s hottest and coolest areas, and gain insights into which interventions are most effective at mitigating urban heat. Over time, we aim to evolve this platform into a predictive tool that can forecast heat patterns and guide proactive mitigation strategies.

Research shows that urban greening through tree planting and park creation can significantly reduce air temperatures, with parks being on average nearly 3.6°F cooler than surrounding non-green areas. In Lisbon, a small 0.24 hectare garden was found by Oliveira et al. to be up to 12.4°F cooler than nearby streets! By working with local authorities and community organizations, we plan to plant thousands of trees across Lahore, focusing on the hottest neighborhoods and streets with the most potential for curbside planting. These urban forests will provide shade, improve air quality, regulate temperatures, foster biodiversity and create recreational spaces for Lahoris to enjoy. I’ve been reading extensively on this topic and I’ve come across quite a bit of excellent work done in other cities. For example, a systematic review by Bowler et al. found that an urban park would be around 1.8°F cooler than non-green sites on average, with larger parks and those with trees providing more daytime cooling. While the cooling effect can extend to surrounding areas, the impact of specific greening interventions on the wider urban area has yet to be fully demonstrated.

Guided by the monitoring platform and proven strategies from around the world, The MinusFifteen Project will also focus on expanding cool roofs and surfaces across the city. Green roofs reduce heat by providing vegetation, while cool roofs use reflective coatings to minimize solar absorption. Studies suggest city-wide green roofs may lower average temperatures between 0.5°F and 5.4°F, while increasing urban albedo through reflective surfaces is expected to reduce average temperatures by around 0.5°F per 0.1 rise in albedo. By incentivizing building retrofits and cool roof adoption in new construction, we aim to transform Lahore’s roofscape into a patchwork of heat-mitigating surfaces, reducing both temperatures and air conditioning energy use.

Recent research has demonstrated the potential of coupling remote sensing data with Internet of Vehicles (IoV) technology to collect environmental data at scale. Connected emergency vehicles equipped with thermal cameras and air quality sensors can continuously monitor pedestrian health indicators and pollution levels as they traverse the city streets. Integrating this real-time, high-resolution data into our monitoring platform will provide an even more detailed picture of Lahore’s microclimate variations, allowing for precise targeting of interventions. We’ll start with static sensors and hopefully scale to these more advanced monitoring technologies.

We want the MinusFifteen Project to prioritize community engagement and education that will promote long-term behavioral changes. Through workshops, neighborhood tree plantings, school programs, and public awareness campaigns, we can raise awareness about climate change, urban heat, and the power of individual actions. Over time, we also want to collaborate with municipal authorities to develop green infrastructure plans, advocate for sustainability policies, and engage the public in shaping Lahore’s climate resilience.

To do all this, we will need your help. The MinusFifteen Project is a collaborative effort and we are calling on the Lahori community to get involved from day one, even before our website at minusfifteen.org is launched. Here’s how you can contribute:

1. You can help install and run temperature sensors.
2. You can help us develop the backend IoT data collection platform and various reporting applications.
3. You can volunteer to plant trees or create a green rooftop.
4. You can lobby your employer in Lahore to contribute.

To sign up for more information or to volunteer, please visit https://minusfifteen-org.eo.page/64bhs and share your email address with us there.

In addition to community participation, Amir and I will be contributing in the following ways:

1. Provide funds to build out the data collection and monitoring platform
2. Fund the distribution of a thousand internet-connected temperature sensors.
3. Funds to plant 10 trial green spaces, with plans to extend this to hundreds once we can work through the initial challenges
4. Funds to paint 100 rooftops white and measure the before/after impact. We will work with communities to obtain access and carry out the work. If this works, we want to scale it to thousands.
5. Leveraging our global academic network to bring the best minds to bear on this problem and obtain feedback to make our shared goal a reality.

The MinusFifteen Project is not a private endeavor; it is a call to action for all Lahoris and those who care about the city’s future. We invite individuals, businesses, and organizations to join us in this crucial mission. Together, we can make a cooler, greener, and healthier Lahore.

As Lahoris, Amir and I feel a deep sense of responsibility toward our city and its people and we are certain there are many other friends just like us. The MinusFifteen Project can be our collective way of giving back and ensuring that future generations can enjoy the Lahore we grew up loving. With the support of our fellow Lahoris and the global community, we are confident that we can succeed. Join us in making The MinusFifteen Project a reality, and let us show the world that Lahore is ready to lead the charge in combating urban heat and creating a more sustainable future.

About the Author: Zaib Husain is the Founder and CEO of MakerArm, a robotics company focused on building collaborative robots, and a Founding Partner at Global Venture Bridge. She served as the Finance Chair on the Board of Directors for Global Austin and is presently a member of the National Foundation STEM Advisory Board for the Boy Scouts of America. Husain earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master’s degree in Finance from the University of London. Along with her husband Amir Husain, she has launched The MinusFifteen Project to address the impact of climate change in their hometown of Lahore, Pakistan.