COMMON SHADE: home, the map of extreme heat
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Plan a response

Turn the map
into a plan.

Six steps take you from who you are protecting to a plan you can run: actions with owners and money, the alert levels that switch them on, how warnings reach people, what could stop it, and a check against WHO’s eight core elements of a heat-health action plan.

Watch: Plan a heat response in six steps · 0:20 · narrated, with captions
Start your plan 

For a workshop or a team meeting. Free, no sign up, and what you type stays in this browser.

Or start from a worked example. Ahmedabad turned a deadly heatwave into South Asia’s first heat action plan. Thane built its plan ward by ward. Tamil Nadu gave heat an owner across a whole state. Singapore wrote heat into the rules for outdoor work, and Dhaka releases help on the forecast, before the peak.

What strong heat plans include with real examples

    Run it as a 90-minute workshop who to invite, and an agenda
    1 Where, and who are you protecting?
    Exposure questions prompts to discuss, not a risk score
    2 Choose the actions

    Actions suggested for the people you chose are marked. Add or remove any. Not sure what to do? See practical actions by setting and cooling options by place.

    3 Agree who leads, who pays, when it happens and how you will know
    4 Set the triggers and the warnings

    A warning only protects people if it switches on action. Agree what each alert level means, who issues it and how it reaches people, including those without a phone.

    5 What could stop it?

    Tick what you expect to get in the way. Each one adds what has moved it elsewhere to your plan.

    6 Check it against WHO’s eight core elements

    WHO/Europe’s 2026 guidance sets out eight elements that working heat-health action plans share. This check updates as you fill in the steps above. To assess how ready your institutions are to deliver, run the self-assessment in the Extreme Heat Risk Governance Framework and Toolkit  (GHHIN, UNDRR and WMO, 2025) as a facilitated workshop; it is a first edition, written mainly for national governments.

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    Turn the map into a plan.

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    A six-step workbook for a workshop or a team meeting: who you are protecting, the actions, who leads and pays, the alert levels that switch them on, what could stop it, and a check against WHO’s eight core elements of a heat-health action plan.

    Next: Worked plans

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