Every summer in Odisha now feels like a warning. Schools shut down before noon. Streets fall silent by afternoon. Heatwave advisories scroll endlessly across television screens while hospitals quietly prepare for dehydration, heat exhaustion, and respiratory distress. This year, temperatures across large parts of Odisha have crossed 44°C. But the crisis is no longer just about weather. It is increasingly about the way we are designing our cities, public spaces, and even our sacred places.
Over the past several years, we conducted a detailed microclimate study at the precinct of Samaleswari Temple, one of western Odisha’s most important religious and cultural landmarks. What we discovered was deeply unsettling: in just seven years, the thermal conditions of the precinct have worsened dramatically, not because Sambalpur suddenly became hotter, but because the precinct itself was redesigned in ways that trap and radiate heat. And what is happening there is quietly happening across Odisha.
The Heat We Built
Using ENVI-met climate simulation software, tools internationally used to model urban heat stress, we recreated the temple precinct as it existed in 2017 and compared it with its present condition in 2026. We kept weather conditions identical in both simulations. The only thing that changed was the built environment: paving materials, vegetation cover, and surface treatment.
The results were alarming. By afternoon, the precinct’s thermal comfort levels had shifted into what global standards classify as extreme heat stress. The Mean Radiant Temperature, the heat absorbed by the human body from surrounding surfaces, rose sharply. The Predicted Mean Vote (PMV), an internationally recognised thermal comfort index, climbed from 5.6 in 2017 to nearly 8.0 in the present-day simulation at 3 PM. That is not a small increase. It is the difference between feeling uncomfortable and feeling physically exhausted simply by standing outdoors. The irony is difficult to ignore: the precinct today looks cleaner, more organised, and visually upgraded. But it has become significantly harsher for the human body.
Why Temple Precincts Are Becoming Hotter
The answer lies beneath our feet. Over the last decade, many public and heritage spaces across Odisha have undergone beautification projects dominated by dressed stone paving, asphalt surfaces, ornamental landscaping, and extensive hardscaping. These surfaces absorb enormous amounts of solar radiation during the day and slowly release that heat back into the environment. In simple terms, they behave like giant storage heaters left under the sun for hours.
At Samaleswari Temple, areas that once had porous ground, intermittent vegetation, and informal shade have increasingly been replaced with expansive paved surfaces. Meanwhile, trees were planted for symmetry and visual neatness rather than for climatic performance. Decorative shrubs may look attractive in photographs, but they provide very little actual shade on peak summer afternoons. The result is a landscape that appears aesthetically improved but feels far more uncomfortable to occupy.
And the people most affected are not occasional tourists. They are elderly devotees, priests, children, and ordinary residents who continue to use these spaces regardless of the heat.
“By 3 PM, the precinct already registers heat stress levels that would be considered dangerous in any occupational setting. The people most exposed are pilgrims, the elderly, and children, those least able to simply turn and leave.” > – From the field notes, Sambalpur, May 2026
The Good News: The Solution Already Exists
The solution is neither futuristic nor expensive. We tested several intervention scenarios at the temple precinct using climate simulation models. The most effective strategy combined two very simple changes: using lighter, reflective paving materials and increasing meaningful tree shade across open areas.
Most paving currently used in public spaces is dark and heat-absorbing. By afternoon, these surfaces radiate heat back toward people walking over them. But lighter surfaces, such as high-albedo concrete, reflective stone finishes, or permeable pavers, behave differently. Instead of absorbing most of the sunlight, they reflect a larger portion of it back into the atmosphere, and the surrounding environment becomes noticeably cooler.
The second intervention was tree cover, not decorative planting, but strategically placed canopy trees that actually shade pedestrian pathways and gathering spaces during peak hours. This distinction is important. A row of small ornamental plants may beautify a plaza, but a mature Neem or Peepal tree can lower surrounding temperatures through shade and evapotranspiration, the natural process through which trees release moisture into the air. Anyone who has stood under a large tree on a May afternoon in Odisha already understands this instinctively. Our simulations simply quantified it scientifically.
When both strategies were combined, reflective surfaces and approximately 50 percent purposeful shade coverage, the reduction in heat stress was significant across the precinct. And perhaps the most important part: these are not imported ideas. Traditional Indian settlements understood climatic comfort long before modern climate science gave it technical terminology. Temple complexes historically evolved with trees, shaded courtyards, water bodies, and transitional spaces that softened heat. What we are recommending is not a radical redesign of heritage spaces. In many ways, it is a return to principles we already knew.
Heritage Cannot Survive Without Climate Comfort
There is a growing tendency to treat climate-sensitive interventions as threats to heritage aesthetics. In reality, the greater threat may be thermal uninhabitability. A temple precinct that becomes unbearable for six to eight months a year risks losing its lived cultural continuity. Pilgrimage depends on physical presence. Ritual depends on the occupation of space. Public heritage cannot survive if public bodies can no longer comfortably inhabit it.
This is not merely an architectural issue anymore. It is a public health issue, a climate issue, and increasingly, a governance issue.
What Odisha Must Do Now
Odisha has the institutions, traditional knowledge, and the policy bandwidth to lead on this. What is needed is a systematic shift in how public spaces are designed, approved, and maintained.
Mandate reflective, high-albedo paving in all new public projects. A simple material specification change in procurement guidelines, requiring lighter, heat-reflective surfaces, costs very little extra and can dramatically reduce ground-level temperatures. This should apply to all government-funded beautification and infrastructure work.
Prioritise canopy-generating native trees over ornamental landscaping. Every public space project should require a tree canopy plan, not just a planting plan. The target should be functional shade over pedestrian pathways and seating areas. Native species like Neem, Peepal, Banyan, and Mahua are well-suited to Odisha’s climate and low-maintenance once established.
Make thermal comfort simulation mandatory before major redevelopment approvals. Before any public space, a temple precinct, a town square, a park, a bus stand forecourt, is redesigned, a basic microclimate impact assessment should be required. Tools like ENVI-met are widely available and well within the technical capacity of state institutions. This is no different from requiring a structural safety check before construction.
Restore temple tanks and water bodies as active cooling infrastructure. Temple tanks were not merely ritual spaces, they were urban cooling systems. Water evaporating into surrounding air lowers local temperatures across a wide radius. Many tanks have been encroached upon or neglected. Restoring them, along with their green buffers, would serve both cultural heritage and climate resilience simultaneously.
Introduce outdoor thermal comfort standards for public spaces. Odisha already regulates structural safety in buildings. Similar standards can be set for thermal safety outdoors. A public space that regularly exceeds safe thermal thresholds should require mitigation measures, just as a building that fails structural norms requires retrofitting. The UTCI (Universal Thermal Climate Index) provides a ready framework.
Create a State Urban Heat Action Plan. Ahmedabad’s heat action plan produced measurable reductions in heat-related deaths. Odisha can go further by extending such planning explicitly to public spaces, heritage zones, and semi-urban towns. This should include heat-risk mapping, seasonal advisories for open-air gatherings, and maintenance protocols for shade trees and water features.
Establish a Climate-Responsive Heritage Design Cell. A dedicated unit within the State Archaeology or Housing and Urban Development Department, even a small one, would build institutional expertise, ensure continuity, and enable better project review. Odisha, with its dense and heavily used temple landscape, has a particularly compelling case for this.
Integrate thermal comfort into Smart City and AMRUT frameworks. Urban local bodies already operate within AMRUT 2.0 and Smart Cities funding. Thermal comfort improvements, reflective pavements, urban canopy programmes, restored water bodies, can be framed as climate resilience investments within these existing structures. This is not about new money; it is about redirecting existing investment more wisely.
Build community awareness and local stewardship. The most durable interventions are the ones communities adopt as their own. Temple management committees, ward bodies, and resident associations can maintain shade trees, protect water bodies, and advocate for better design. Simple, visual, local-language awareness campaigns about shade and surface heat can shift the conversation from aesthetics to safety.
The Warning Is Visible
What makes the Samaleswari Temple study important is not simply that it documents rising heat. It demonstrates that design decisions made over just seven years measurably increased the thermal burden on every person entering the precinct. But it also demonstrates something hopeful: the damage is reversible.
The climate crisis often feels distant, glaciers melting somewhere far away, sea levels rising beyond the horizon. But sometimes the evidence is immediate and local. It is there in the stone beneath our feet, radiating heat into the bodies of pilgrims standing in prayer.
Odisha’s temple precincts are telling us something urgent. The solutions are not expensive, not unproven, and not unfamiliar. They are rooted in the same wisdom that shaped these spaces centuries ago.
The question is whether we are willing to listen before we pave the next public space exactly the same way.
This article was previously published in the Orissa Today on 14 May 2026. © Orissa Today. It is republished here in the larger interest of public and the serious nature of the subject. It is a Call to Action!
Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Sambalpur, Odisha
