Active Mobility, Climate Change, and Rehabilitation - Digital Pathways to Heat Resilience
KlimaFIT is a 30-month research project investigating how active mobility can be integrated into heat and mobility management to improve heat resilience. The Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital Health and Prevention (LBI-DHP) plays a key role in the project, with Dr. Jan Smeddinck leading Work Package 5 focused on digital intervention design based on the AktivPlan platform.
Visit the KlimaFIT project website.
KlimaFIT System Overview: Active Mobility, Climate Change, and Rehabilitation
Aims and Motivation
Climate change is leading to an increasing number of hot days in Austria (> 30° C), posing significant health risks for vulnerable populations. Many of these risks stem from diseases associated with sedentary lifestyles, which reduce healthy life years and cause cardiovascular and metabolic impairments.
Physical activity offers health benefits and improves heat tolerance through enhanced cardiovascular fitness. When performed in warm conditions, significant acclimatization effects develop after just 10 days, substantially improving heat resilience.
KlimaFIT addresses the dilemma between adaptation strategies that avoid physical exertion during heat exposure and targeted approaches to strengthen heat tolerance. The project examines how promoting active mobility within an integrated, digitally supported heat and mobility management system can help resolve this challenge.
Key Objectives
The project builds on the “double pay-off” of active mobility by combining climate-friendly and health-promoting effects, focusing on life transition phases. KlimaFIT directly involves cardiovascular-vulnerable individuals from rehabilitation contexts in the research process.
Through a co-creative approach, the project develops strategies for climate-aware active mobility that consider environmental conditions and individual needs. Based on these insights, researchers explore how these approaches can be integrated into motivational campaigns within personalized rehabilitation plans.
Digital Intervention Design
Under Dr. Jan Smeddinck’s leadership, Work Package 5 focuses on developing digital interventions based on the AktivPlan platform. The situation-aware intervention service, built on ontologies for situation recognition, delivers appropriate motivational triggers to the KlimaAktivPlan application designed within the project.
A central research and design challenge involves creating effective nudging, gamification, and other motivational elements tailored to different situations and target groups. The goal is to raise awareness about the positive effects on health, heat resilience, and contributions to CO2-neutral mobility, with comprehensive monitoring to evaluate overall impact.
Interdisciplinary Collaboration
The research is implemented by an interdisciplinary team spanning medicine, communication and behavioral change, sustainable mobility, geoinformatics, IT, and digital health. The project adheres to standard ethical protocols in medical research, including ethics committee involvement.
Beyond the research phase, KlimaFIT aims to evolve into a digital health application, creating additional opportunities to translate research findings into practical applications that contribute sustainably to public health and climate protection.
This project is funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) under the Digital Technologies program (Digital Solutions for People and Society 2023).