As climate change drives more frequent and intense heatwaves across Europe, practical local action has never been more urgent. The Ready4Heat project helped municipalities to introduce tested short-, medium- and long-term measures with a focus on the most urgent issue: heat waves and their impact on vulnerable groups. The project developed municipal heat and health adaptation plans backed by measures such as heat warning systems and helped them to adopt these quickly. Each city’s adopted Heat and Health Action Plans (HHAPs) was developed based on a heat stress map and involved stakeholder workshops. The four pilot cities of Hajdúböszörmény (Hungary), Maribor (Slovenia), Weiz (Austria) and Worms (Germany), along with their technical partners working on climate change and health issues, introduced local networks of concerned groups to support each other and tackle the heat problem. The municipalities implemented pilot actions fitting to their heat-health actions plans: development of cooling green “urban islands” (Hajdúböszörmény), shading of a playground through the use of a green pergola (Maribor), the environmentally friendly cooling of rooms in a retirement home (Weiz), and the involvement of stakeholders within an urban area to build an active network (Worms).
Three years ago, we came together with a shared question: how can cities better protect people from extreme heat, especially those most at risk? What began as a project soon became a partnership, a network, and a shared commitment to turning knowledge into action. Across borders and sectors, we worked with municipalities, researchers, care providers, practitioners, and communities to understand what heat means on the ground. We listened to people in care homes, schools, public institutions, and city departments. We tested ideas, learned from local realities, and built solutions that were practical, adaptable, and rooted in everyday life.
Ready4Heat was not just about plans on paper. It was about shaded streets, cooler public spaces, better prepared care facilities, stronger cooperation, and more awareness of how heat affects vulnerable people differently. It was about showing that local action matters, and that even small steps can make cities safer and more comfortable during heatwaves. Along the way, we saw what works best: cooperation across departments, trust between institutions and communities, and tools that are easy to understand and use. We also learned that heat adaptation must be long-term, flexible, and connected to wider social and health systems. These lessons shaped our results, and the way we worked together.
As the project comes to an end, we do not say goodbye to the results. We say goodbye to the project phase, while the ideas, tools, and partnerships live on. We hope that cities, networks, and practitioners across Europe will continue to use, adapt, and build on what we created together.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to Ready4Heat — our partners, experts, institutions, and local stakeholders. This work was only possible because of your commitment, openness, and shared belief that cities can do better for people facing extreme heat. Make sure you browse through our replicable results and we truly hope the soon all municipalities have their own heat-health adaptation plans and are committed to implement all changes needed:
Roadmap for local heat adaptation
Concept for strategy and action plan development
Examples of municipal heat strategies and action plans
Solutions recommended to improve sustainability of heat measures:
- Lessons learned from pilots: E-brochure
- Policy brief Austria
- Policy brief Slovenia
- Policy Brief Hungary
- Policy brief Germany
Concrete heat adaptation measures implemented:
- Hungarian Pilot Information
- Slovenian Pilot Information
- Austrian Pilot Information
- German Pilot Information
More project outputs and downloadable materials Communication materials and visual resources