HiLSA-Project (2025 - 2027)

Motivation

Climate change scenarios predict the increase of heat events in many parts of world. Urban administrations are confronted with heat-related problems because the “urban heat island”-effect has environmental, political and societal impacts. Health issues are related to heat events due to the vulnerability of specific societal groups. Urban governments have to react in a goal-driven manner, thus identifying vulnerable groups, the locations where they live, what the threats are, and what this means for concerned people facing different ailments and illnesses resulting from heat. Enhancing the sensitivity of such groups, and training of competencies to act adequately during heat periods, are main aims of the project “HiLSA”.

Project framework and goals

The project “HiLSA” will contribute to enlighten the risks resulting from heat for vulnerable groups. Two universities work together with stakeholders from practice and decision-makers in administrations. The consortium, consisting of health scientists, sociologists and geoinformatics experts, aims at the investigation of relationships between heat waves, accompanied by increased UV-radiation, and health problems for specific groups, e. g. elderly people, children, handicapped people or people with various kinds of stress or diseases.

The relationships will be analysed based on existing data and newly generated data. The aim is to establish a common understanding of heat-associated health problems, and to increase competencies of vulnerable groups on the other. The knowledge gained in the project will be provided in targeted form to users, thus increasing their knowledge, possibly followed by a changed behaviour when facing heat. Parallel to that, strategies of how to mitigate threats resulting from heat are developed and transformed into recommendations to mitigate such threats.

Important sub goals of HiLSA are:

• Systematic collection of national and international scientific results focusing on the relationship between heat and health
• Identification of heat-related data, indicators, measures, actors and legal regulations
• Quantitative and qualitative interviews of stakeholders
• Production of vulnerability maps and other forms of spatial visualisation using GIS
• synthesis of a transferrable concept of a heat-associated health competency and its operationalisation

Expected results

The project follows a transdisciplinary approach. In particular, the requirements of the vulnerable groups and current policies will be considered. The results will be communicated, among other means, via a platform that includes a GIS-based online mapping system to inform users, in particular vulnerable people, about heat-related threats and to support them when assessing an adequate behaviour during heat periods, thus considering their individual health-related characteristics.