Project Sanctuary · Seneca Energy Hackathon 2026
Pearson hit 35.8 °C on June 23, 2025, about 5 km from Malton Community Centre and Library, the building Sanctuary ranks first. CBC · GTA heat warning, June 2025
Extreme-heat days in the Toronto area are climbing from about 8 a year in the 1950s to 18 today, and a projected 54 by the 2060s.
Why it matters
Heat waves and outages hit unevenly. The people most at risk may not be near an official cooling space, may not know where to go, or may not trust a distant facility during an emergency.
Peel's Heat Vulnerability Index (HVI) combines heat exposure, sensitivity, and coping capacity into one score per census tract, ranked in quintiles (fifths). The most vulnerable quintile sits in a few pockets, not evenly across the region.
Cooling centres matter, but distance, opening hours, familiarity, mobility, and trust decide whether an older adult or a renter without air conditioning can actually use one.
Heat, storms, and floods also cut power. Cooling, charging, clean water, and a way to reach help all turn urgent at the same address, at the same moment.
The decision
Scroll the map: heat risk, the shelter gap, ten trusted candidates, then the five Peel should harden first, ending on Malton. Click any pin or row to inspect the score behind it.
01 · Risk
Peel Public Health's Heat Vulnerability Index (HVI) scores every census tract on heat exposure, sensitivity, and the capacity to cope, from quintile 1 (lowest) to quintile 5 (highest). A pocket of Malton and northeast Brampton sits in quintile 5.
02 · Gap
Official cooling spaces are limited and spread thin. During an outage the nearest one may be closed, unfamiliar, or two bus rides away from the people who need it most.
03 · Candidates
Libraries, recreation centres, gurdwaras, mosques, and mandirs. Places people already know and can reach. Each one carries a modelled 500 m catchment, the area within a short walk.
04 · The decision
Sanctuary ranks them. The rank is hand-verified from heat risk, trust, modelled reach, and hardening potential, never from an estimate alone.
05 · Start here
Top HVI quintile, a civic anchor with a large roof, inside the hottest pocket. The panel stays honest about what is verified, what is modelled, and what still needs a site audit.
Inside the first-pass score
Beyond the first-pass score
Evidence-backed hero candidate; HVI 5 and connected to Malton Library.
official building pageRank is hand-verified. A building cannot enter the top five from a modelled estimate alone.
All ten candidates · click to inspect
Read on