Zagreb's Post-Earthquake Heat Mapping — Targeting Tree Planting & Green Roofs to Cool City Blocks

Following the March 2020 magnitude-5.5 earthquake, the City of Zagreb used the ensuing reconstruction process to fund a more systematic response to urban heat. Working with the University of Zagreb's Department of Geophysics and the North-West Croatia Regional Energy and Climate Agency (REGEA), and supported by the EU Horizon 'REGILIENCE' project and INTERREG funding, the city produced block-level heat maps and analysed a pilot district in detail before folding green-infrastructure requirements into rebuilding guidance. A parallel 'Greening the City' tree-planting effort added roughly 1,500 trees across the city, concentrated at schools and other educational facilities.
The University of Zagreb's block-level analysis found temperature variation of up to 4°C within the same building block attributable to the presence or absence of vegetation and green infrastructure — the headline quantified result cited by the EU's Climate-ADAPT mission-story programme. Separate peer-reviewed research (Sustainability, 2023) has assessed nature-based-solutions potential for daylighting and softening Zagreb's culverted Medveščak and Črnomerec streams, and the city has since stated an intention to make nature-based solutions mandatory in new construction, though a cited carbon-sink calculator to quantify that policy's effect was still under development as of late 2025 and no city-wide before/after biodiversity or stormwater results have yet been published.

Read the full analysis: https://regilience.eu/category/news/