IIASA’s EQU Research Group started the new year with the kick-off meeting of the Transform-Labor project led by Julia Beier and Susanne Hanger-Kopp. The project centers heat affected workers in Austria in the development of transformative climate change adaptation options.
© IIASA
Partners from IIASA, BOKU University, The Austrian National Public Health Institute (Gesundheit Österreich GmbH, GÖG), and the University of Leeds came together to establish a shared understanding of key concepts, align expectations, and plan the project’s next steps. The meeting also focused on designing stakeholder engagement activities and discussing questions of justice that run throughout the project.
Through partnerships with key stakeholders such as the Chamber of Labor and the Construction and Woodworkers’ Union, the project
(a) examines the root causes of workers’ vulnerability across political-economic, institutional, socio-cultural, and infrastructural dimensions;
(b) develops holistic indicators for assessing the effectiveness of transformative adaptation; and
(c) identifies pathways for transformative adaptation that can improve workers’ wellbeing and support the equitable and sustainable provision of essential services in the care and housing sectors.
The Transform-Labor project thereby addresses the challenges of adapting to increasing heat stress affecting Austria’s mobile long-term care and construction sectors and explores how a System of Provision (SoP) approach can support the development of transformative adaptation measures. The project focuses in particular on heat-exposed workers in these sectors and on labor as a crucial provisioning factor. Both sectors are characterized by gendered divisions of labor, physically demanding working conditions, labor shortages, and high levels of heat exposure.
Project details
Project duration: 1 January 2026 – 31 December 2027
Funding Agency: Österreichischer Klima- und Energiefonds (Austrian Climate and Energy Fund), represented by Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft mbH (FFG)
Funding Program: Austrian Climate Research Programme 2024
Partners:
- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Population and Just Societies (POPJUS) Programm, Equity & Justice (EQU) Research Group
- Universität für Bodenkultur Wien, Institut für Soziale Ökologie
- Gesundheit Österreich GmbH (GÖG)
- University of Leeds, Sustainability Research Institute
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