EventsChallenge 05 · Charity · patient safety
Ahead of the Heat
Turn official heat-health alerts into timely, personal safety notifications that protect brain-injury survivors.
- before the heat-alert season
- May 2027
- alert season, England
- 1 Jun – 30 Sep
- health data, minimised
- Consent
01 — The problem
When the heat rises, who is at risk?
Heatwaves are getting more frequent and intense, and adults living with acquired brain injury can be especially vulnerable: fatigue, medication and difficulty recognising or responding to heat all raise the risk. The UK already runs an authoritative early-warning system aimed at exactly this.
But a regional colour-coded alert does not tell a small charity who among its clients is most at risk today, or what to do. The signal exists; the personal, timely action does not. The gap is between a national alert and a knock on the right door.
01National alert, local gap
A regional yellow, amber or red alert is not a plan for a named, at-risk client.
Why this is hard
Heat-health alerts are issued for regions, which is the right scale for planning services and the wrong scale for one person. Between the alert and the individual sits the question of who, specifically, needs something done today.
02Vulnerable people, high stakes
Survivors may not self-identify heat risk; carers cannot watch everyone at once.
Why this is hard
The difficulty is about who notices. If the person most at risk may not raise it themselves, then the warning has to reach somebody who can act on their behalf — and a carer supporting many people cannot watch them all at the same time.
03Small charity, big duty
Limited technical capacity — but a real duty of care when a heatwave hits.
Why this is hard
A duty of care does not scale with the size of the technical team. A small organisation carries the same obligation to act on a warning as a large one, with far less to act with.
02 — The question
How might a warning issued for a whole region reach the individual people most at risk from it, while there is still time to act?
The question deliberately does not say what an answer looks like. A build, an analysis, a design or a shared standard can all answer it — see the four tracks.
03 — The mission
From a regional alert to a knock on the right door
Build an ethical prototype that ingests official heat-health alerts and turns them into timely, personalised safety notifications and a simple staff view — so a small charity can reach the service users most at risk before a heatwave bites, and act.
What good looks like
- 1Safety impactDoes it reach the right people in time?
- 2ClarityUsable by busy support staff and clients?
- 3IntegrationJoins official alerts with the charity’s knowledge?
- 4Responsible useConsented, GDPR-safe; supports, not replaces, care?
- 5FeasibilityCould a small charity run it each summer?
Five criteria, equal weight.
04 — The data
The official alerts and data you will use
Heat-Health Alerts are issued by UKHSA with the Met Office; the season runs 1 June to 30 September.
| Dataset | What it is | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| UKHSA Heat-Health Alerts | Official colour-coded alerts (green to red) for England — dashboard and email feed. | Free · UKHSA |
| Met Office weather data | Forecast temperatures, heatwave thresholds and severe-weather warnings. | Free / open |
| Adverse Weather and Health Plan | The national plan for what to do before and during a heat alert. | Public guidance |
| Charity service knowledge | Client needs and contact preferences, held with consent by the charity. | Consent-held |
| Open notification tooling | SMS, email and app channels to turn an alert into a personal message. | Open source |
Open data repository on GitHub (opens external site) No account needed to browse
Take part in 05
Late May 2027. 100 places, free to enter, open to all ages — some ages may need parental consent. Bring a team or form one on the day — no prior coding needed.