Final Conference of the Heat and Health in Cities research project

After five years of research, the H2C – Heat and Health in Cities – project is sharing its findings! The project’s final conference will take place on 6 October 2025 at the Halle Pajol in Paris. The full programme and registration link will be available soon. Climate change is already palpable in the Île-de-France region, with the area warming rapidly (+2°C since the mid-1950s) and experiencing increasingly severe heatwaves. This is not without consequences for human health, as past experience has shown: nearly 15,000 excess deaths nationwide during the 2003 heatwave, including 5,000 in the Île-de-France region alone. These extreme weather events are set to become more frequent and intense in the future. According to Météo France, a year as hot as 2022 would be an exceptionally cool year by 2100 under the TRACC (reference trajectory for adaptation to climate change for a France at +4°C). The occurrence of heatwaves raises questions in several areas of knowledge:

• Understand the factors that increase the intensity of these events in our cities, from the neighbourhood level to the building level,
• Put into perspective the health issues related to high exposure to the environment but also linked to the deterioration of air quality,
• Qualify the social issues and the vulnerability of the population to these events,
• Shed light on the solutions and expected effects to deal with these events, illustrating the role played by green spaces.

These knowledge issues, targeting the Paris region, were addressed in a research project called ‘H2C’ – Heat and Health in Cities, coordinated by CRNM Météo France and funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR). The project ran from 2021 to 2025 and brought together a consortium of eight partners, researchers and experts, enabling a multidisciplinary and multisectoral approach to health issues in cities in the face of high temperatures. This academic work to enhance knowledge is also being carried out with the aim of improving urban climate services for the various parties involved, to help them deploy relevant solutions. Over the past four years, nearly a hundred of these parties involved in health, social, planning and urban development initiatives have participated in providing us with feedback on their user needs – through questionnaires and workshops to co-develop a climate service – and will be able to testify to this.