Measures to combat heat

There are many different measures that can help combat heat. For instance, trees help to cool the environment, sunshades make homes more heat-proof and a good local heat action plan ensures that vulnerable groups are protected against heat stress as much as possible. This page provides information on what you can do to help residents better cope with the adverse effects of heat.

Measures needed for outdoor and indoor spaces, and public health

To tackle heat stress, it is necessary to take measures in three domains: outdoors (the environment), indoors (buildings), and public health. These three domains also overlap. Thus, the local heat action plan focuses primarily on public health, but it also deals with measures in the environment and in buildings. Below is an overview of measures you can take for each domain.

• Environment: measures to make the environment more heat-proof (in Dutch)
• Buildings: measures to make homes more heat-proof (in Dutch)
• Public health: measures to prevent heat stress among vulnerable groups (in Dutch)

Tackling heat from the 3 domains: environment, buildings and public health

Heat is best tackled from each of the various domains together. Below you will find tools (in Dutch) to help with such an integral approach:

• Menukaart Hitte in de Gebouwde Omgeving: this tool provides municipalities with an overview of heat measures and a step-by-step plan to draw up an integral heat action plan.
• Handreiking Hitte 3.0: this tool is intended for municipalities and housing corporations. It includes a decision tree that can help determine where the heat problem is greatest. This decision tree looks at the percentage of frail people, the average shade on buildings, PET (Physical Equivalent Temperature) and the percentage of greenery in the neighbourhood or area.
• Handreiking Lokaal Hitteplan: this guide helps you draw up a local heat plan together with the parties involved.

Heat manager can help with integrated approach

Heat is a difficult problem to tackle. Not only because it touches multiple domains, but also because heat has only become a problem in the Netherlands in recent decades. There is no central organisation to deal with heat yet. A 'heat manager' for each municipality could help. Read more about the need for a heat manager in the interview with heat experts Madeleen Helmer and Lisette Klok (in Dutch). Here you will also find some other tools and sources of inspiration you can use to tackle the heat problem from the three domains together.