When Heat Becomes a Health Risk

Heat as an Urgent Health Issue

Temperatures exceeding 30°C, little night-time cooling, and overheated indoor environments are making the current heatwave in Austria a significant health burden—particularly for older adults, people living with chronic illnesses, and those residing in urban areas.
What was once regarded primarily as a seasonal comfort issue is increasingly being recognised as a medical and societal challenge. This is where GreenTouch makes a difference. The project develops both digital and analogue tools that help make practical coping strategies for heat understandable, tangible, and applicable in everyday life.
The project is carried out by an interdisciplinary consortium consisting of the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS), which leads the project, the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), UAS St. Pölten, IMC Krems University of Applied Sciences, and the project partners Future Minds and in-scope GmbH. The initiative is funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG).

Co-Creation Meets Extended Reality

At the heart of GreenTouch is a co-creation process in which experts from occupational therapy, climate communication, and technology work together with practitioners and clients to develop innovative solutions. Early in the project, one issue became clear: heat is among the most pressing everyday challenges in healthcare settings.
This led to the development of an XR prototype that uses Virtual Reality (VR) to make the complex relationships between climate, health, and behaviour more accessible and understandable. The aim is not only to convey knowledge but also to realistically simulate everyday situations and allow users to experience practical response strategies first-hand.
“We see very clearly in practice how heat stress affects our clients’ daily lives and exacerbates physical and psychological symptoms such as lack of motivation, sleep disturbances, and pain. With GreenTouch, we want to address this challenge directly—not only by providing information, but by making practical coping strategies tangible and enabling sustainable behavioural change,” says Spevak-Grossi, project lead at IMC Krems.

Virtual and Analogue Tools for Everyday Life

The VR scenarios developed within the project recreate typical situations encountered during periods of extreme heat, including effective ventilation, daily routine planning, and simple cooling strategies for the home environment. This opens up new opportunities, particularly in occupational therapy, as clients can not only discuss coping strategies but also test them directly in a realistic setting.
To complement the digital solutions, the project team has also developed an analogue card set that makes the content accessible without the need for technology. Measures are evaluated according to cooling effectiveness, environmental sustainability, effort required, and cost—providing a practical approach that combines both health and environmental considerations.

Climate Competence as a Future Task for Healthcare

GreenTouch addresses a growing challenge within healthcare: the increasing impact of climate change on therapeutic and care practices. Heatwaves in particular represent a rising risk, the consequences of which are still frequently underestimated.
The project therefore aims to embed climate competence sustainably within the education and professional practice of healthcare occupations. Students and healthcare professionals should be equipped to recognise climate-related health risks at an early stage and to pass on effective, practical adaptation strategies to their clients.
In doing so, GreenTouch combines technological innovation with applied healthcare practice and demonstrates how Extended Reality can help make complex interactions between climate and health understandable, immersive, and immediately applicable. In light of current heatwaves, it is becoming increasingly clear that coping with extreme temperatures is no longer a challenge for the future—it is an urgent task for healthcare professionals and society today, with GreenTouch providing practical tools and solutions for everyday life.
At IMC Krems, Virtual Reality scenarios have already been successfully integrated into the Occupational Therapy degree programme, helping students gain both theoretical and practical insights into climate competence in their future professional practice. The course is based on the Handbook for Strengthening Climate Competence in Health Professions developed by Gesundheit Österreich GmbH. Through this teaching initiative, students also gained valuable insights into the interdisciplinary research project GreenTouch.