HEAT: Human health and wellbeing today and in the future - extreme temperatures in urban landscapes

This initiative aims at creating a multi- and cross-disciplinary research programme centered on solutions to the impacts of increasing heat, on the local level, resulting from anthropogenic climate change. That global warming entails increasing warm extremes, something which has already been observed, is a well-established outcome of climate change (IPCC 2013). Heat stress has severe effects on human society, people’s health, animals and ecosystems. The heat research programme will by necessity engage scientists from a multitude of disciplines including the natural, engineering, medical, design and social- economic- and legal sciences as well as relevant stakeholder groups. Our vision is that the programme will trigger more cross-departmental collaborations under this umbrella, where possible solutions must consider a variety of aspects in order to provide a scientifically sound basis for future policy-making.