BEAT THE HEAT

A global health emergency

Extreme heat is a wicked problem

An urgent and growing threat. Every link in this web runs through someone’s health, income or home, and many of them loop back to make the heat worse.

Systems mapped
10
Consequences mapped
73
Vicious cycles
17
Places to break them
25
Institutions holding levers
14

This map is large, but the real web is larger. Every heatwave reveals links that aren’t drawn here yet. Know a link, a loop or a lever that’s missing? Tell us

Direct impact Knock-on effect Vicious-cycle link Bigger dot = caught in more vicious cycles

Drag to move · pinch or + to zoom · tap any dot

Where the loops break

17 vicious cycles.
25 ways to break them.

Every loop has weak links: points where one well-placed action stops the cycle from feeding itself. The strongest levers break several loops at once, and the pressure points are where many loops meet.

Who holds the levers

Every loop runs
through an institution.

Heat becomes deadly where nobody acts. Each breaking point belongs to someone: a ministry, a city, an employer, an insurer, a funder, a community. Choose one to see the loops it can help break.

    Bars show how many of the vicious cycles each institution’s levers can help break. No single institution can break them all, which is why the response has to be shared.

    Why “wicked”?

    No single cause.
    No single owner.
    No finish line.

    In 1973 the planners Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber called some problems “wicked”: problems that resist a clean definition and have no final solution. Extreme heat is one of them.

    1. There is no single cause to fix

      Heat arrives through land, bodies, cities and wallets at the same time, and each system pushes on the others.

    2. Every solution changes the problem

      Air conditioning cools a room and heats the street. Shifting work to cooler hours protects one worker and cuts another’s wages.

    3. The problem feeds itself

      Dry soils, melting ice, burning forests and fossil-powered cooling all loop back to make the heat worse.

    4. It lands unequally

      The same heatwave is an inconvenience for some and a catastrophe for others. The difference is protection, not temperature.

    Pull one thread
    and the whole web moves.

    Cut the right one, in the right institution, and whole loops stop.

    See where loops break

    The web, link by link

    The same map as a list, one system at a time. Every consequence and what it leads to.