Climate Ready Schools

Consequences of climate change affect different areas of life in various forms and intensities. In the context of schools, too, impacts are already perceived with increasing frequency. While heat issues in Austria were mainly limited to the months of July and August in the past, they will also occur more frequently in May, June, and September in the future. To enable Austrian schools to adapt to future climate conditions, the "Climate Ready Schools" project is researching ways to increase the climate resilience of Austrian schools. Its objectives include

• the development of measures and recommendations for action to increase climate resilience regarding specific circumstances of schools,
• building knowledge on climate vulnerability and climate resilience,
• selected demo implementations to increase climate resilience in schools, and
• the development of a climate readiness check, which enables the assessment of a school's climate resilience.

Students, teaching staff, school management and school maintenance staff from the partner schools are working as Citizen Scientists together with scientists from the Austrian Institute of Technology and the Vienna University of Technology (research area Ecological Building Technologies) to answer the following research questions:

• How well are schools prepared for climate change and in what ways are students, teachers, other school staff and school management already affected by climate change in the school context?
• Which climate change adaptation measures are particularly effective and especially suitable for schools to strengthen their climate resilience?
• Which measures can be initiated, implemented, and maintained sustainably by which stakeholders?

Various scientific methods, such as expert interviews, in-situ measurements, numerical microclimate simulations and co-creative workshops are used to develop concrete measures and concepts that can be implemented in everyday school life.

The collaboration with the Citizen Scientists of the 6 partner schools and their contributions are diverse and include interviews on climate change concerns, workshops on the development of climate resilience measures, development of open space design concepts, measurements of the local microclimate, or installation of shading and greening elements. The research tasks of students are selected according to their school type (secondary schools, higher technical colleges) to integrate and address their individual expertise in the project. Furthermore, the location of the partner schools (inner city, periphery, rural) and related circumstances and possibilities to enhance climate resilience of the partner schools will be investigated together with Citizen Scientists.

As not every partner school can be involved in all tasks, the contribution of each school is coordinated at the start of the project and the specific circumstances of each school are considered already at an early stage. In addition, networking and the exchange of knowledge between the schools is encouraged to facilitate the exchange of experience and knowledge transfer.