EXTReme tEMperature Alerts for Europe (EXTREMA)

The EXTREMA project aims to improve the resilience of the European population to extreme temperature events (heatwaves and cold spells). Such events can cause many excess deaths -especially in cities- and are projected to become more pronounced due to climate change. To maintain an acceptable quality of life for the foreseeable future, Europe has to increase the population’s resilience to extreme temperatures by establishing disaster risk reduction actions and in particular by building the capacity of the population to anticipate and respond to disasters. Increased awareness induces self-protective behaviours that in turn reduce the loss of life. To that end, EXTREMA proposes a new innovative and effective approach that aims to exploit the high penetration of smartphones in Europe so as to implement a digital infrastructure in the form of a mobile application for the public, and an administration web hub for the local authorities.

The mobile app will evaluate the real-time personalised health risk of the user at his/her location, and if high, it will alert him/her and provide recommendations. The web hub will provide information and tools to the authorities to help them manage the disaster: next day alerts, current hazard maps, and an information management tool for the open centres. In addition, to ensure the effective and quick scaling up of the user basis, EXTREMA, has secured access to several important international city networks.

The EXTREMA consortium consists of 8 beneficiaries in 5 EU Member States (MS): one research centre, two universities (one being a WHO Collaborating Centre), three private companies, one NGO and a local government development company.

Website of EXTREMA project