The Heat Plan That Became the Template

In May 2010 Ahmedabad recorded 46.8°C and a spike of over a thousand excess deaths, and the city discovered it had no mechanism for treating heat as an emergency. Working with the Indian Institute of Public Health Gandhinagar, the Natural Resources Defense Council and local hospitals, the municipal corporation built South Asia's first heat action plan and launched it in 2013: a colour-coded early warning tied to forecast temperature, alerts pushed to hospitals and ambulance services so wards are staffed and ice packs ready before the heat arrives, training for slum-based health workers, and public cooling spaces opened in temples, libraries and malls. An independent evaluation found the plan avoided more than 1,100 deaths a year after implementation. It has since been copied across India — Nagpur, Surat, Bhubaneswar and dozens more — and is the reference document most other tropical cities start from.