Arizona State University and the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust recently announced a $15 million deal to help Phoenix-area residents deal with shocks and stressors — like heat — in a program called the ASU Knowledge Exchange for Resilience.

ASU president Michael Crow said the university is working to create a mechanism for new ideas and solutions to enhance resiliency. Crow said a program like this could have helped with the housing market crash a decade ago.

“Perhaps we could have taken more steps," Crow said recently on Arizona Horizon.  "Perhaps we could have been better prepared, perhaps we could have known the nature of that particular economic shock and then the best routes out of that economic shock, again by working together.”

Crow said one of the pilot programs so far has been studying the increasing extreme nighttime temperatures in the Valley.