The urban heat island effect refers to the urban high temperature caused by a large number of artificial heating, buildings and roads and other high thermal storage and green space reduction. With the increasing urbanization of the world's population and the continuous climate change, urban heat island has led to a series of problems such as the increase in the number of deaths, the deterioration of health conditions, the increase in energy consumption and the destruction of infrastructure. Using more reflective materials on roofs and roads in urban areas can reduce the heat island effect and the resulting death risk.

The World Resources Institute uses the machine learning resources provided by Microsoft to build a tool to map, measure and monitor the changes of urban surface reflectance over time, with the ultimate goal of reducing urban heat.