The Climate Agenda is mobilising university youth to conduct primary surveys on extreme heat's impact on street vendors, rickshaw pullers, sanitation workers, and daily-wage labourers in Varanasi and Patna, capturing effects on health, income, work, and coping needs.
This will be combined with secondary data, heat vulnerability maps, health records, and urban infrastructure datasets, analysed with Azim Premji University to build a Heatwave Risk Index mapping risk by location, community, and time of day.
Findings will inform Varanasi's Heat Action Plan and guide similar stakeholder engagement in Patna, while also shaping scalable, community-level heat preparedness measures in both cities.
The project places communities at the centre of heat preparedness by documenting how vulnerable workers currently anticipate, experience, and cope with extreme heat. The research will identify existing coping practices, gaps in access to essential resources and services, and the types of support communities consider most practical and effective. These insights will help strengthen early preparedness, improve risk communication, and inform more responsive and community-centred heat action measures.