Extreme Temperatures Risk: Advancing on SDGs Indicators Monitoring, Reporting and Accounting

The SDGs-EYES webinar “Extreme temperatures risks: Advancing on SDGs indicators monitoring, reporting and accounting” provided an in-depth exploration of critical environmental challenges and solutions. This webinar highlights the innovative Copernicus-based tool delivering advanced mapping of SDG indicators of climate hazards and related health risks, complementing the mean near-surface temperature indicator with a new set of more representative indicators.

Participants gained insights into the pilot’s advanced tools and datasets, designed to enhance stakeholders’ understanding of a risk assessment process focused on the heat-health nexus in the urban context, which combines hazard with demographic, socio-economic, health and built environment factors.

The webinar fostered discussions on potential applications, align solutions with user needs, and encouraged the adoption of the pilot’s outcomes to address real-world challenges.

 Key Highlights

• Local adaptation requires high-resolution EO data. Panel experts agreed that effective climate adaptation at the local authority level requires spatially detailed, high-resolution EO data. Given the highly localised nature of heat risks, access to granular data is crucial to support planning, risk mapping, and targeted interventions.
  Integrating EO with demographic and health data improves risk forecasting. Combining EO-derived indicators with demographic and socioeconomic data enhances the ability to identify vulnerable populations and improve predictive accuracy. This integration supports more effective public health planning, including city-level heat-health action plans and early warning systems. Health agencies show strong interest in such data-driven approaches but require support in accessing the right tools, skills, and training to fully utilise EO-based insights.
• Usability and data complexity limit EO adoption among local authorities. A shared challenge identified by the panel was the technical barrier for non-experts in interpreting EO datasets. Many local authorities, especially smaller ones, lack the internal capacity to process and act on complex data. Therefore, EO solutions must be simplified, fit into existing systems, and be communicated in language tailored to different user groups, ensuring they are genuinely useful for planners, public health officials, and decision-makers alike.
  Cross-sector collaboration is essential for operational success. There was strong consensus on the importance of collaboration across sectors – particularly between public health institutions, local authorities, urban planners, and emergency services. Multi-disciplinary cooperation enables more comprehensive and integrated responses to extreme heat and other climate risks.
• Capacity-building and co-design foster long-term adoption. Co-designing EO solutions with local planners and health services was emphasised as a key success factor, ensuring that tools are practical, trusted, and aligned with user needs. Building trust, strengthening local capacities, and involving users early through co-creation increase both the practical use and sustainability of EO applications. The aim is not just to “scale up” but to scale smart, ensuring that solutions are strongly embedded in local contexts.
• EO tools must align with existing local strategies and frameworks. To ensure relevance and uptake, EO-based solutions need to complement existing municipal and national strategies, such as heat-health warning systems and climate adaptation plans. Tools that build on existing practices, rather than duplicating or complicating them, are more likely to be sustained and scaled

Key Takeaways and Next Steps

The webinar reaffirmed the critical role of EO-based tools in enhancing climate and health resilience, particularly within the context of SDG monitoring. The Turin pilot stood out as a robust example of how combining Earth Observation data with public health and socio-demographic indicators can support targeted, local adaptation strategies, especially in cities vulnerable to extreme heat.

Among the most important takeaways was the value of high-resolution, localised data to support planning at the neighbourhood scale, and the importance of making tools accessible for non-experts in smaller municipalities. Participants also highlighted the benefits of co-design in improving usability and uptake, the potential for replication across other European cities, and the need for stronger links between existing initiatives to share methodologies and avoid duplication.

Looking ahead, the SDGs-EYES project will focus on further refining the Turin pilot based on this feedback and deepening collaboration with interested organisations. Mentimeter polling during the webinar confirmed strong interest, with most respondents finding the tool useful and several expressing interest in participating as validation or exploitation users. These encouraging signals will guide efforts to identify partners for further testing, support transferability, and promote long-term integration into local planning processes.