The Spanish city of Seville is becoming the first in the world to test a pilot system that names heatwaves.
The weather conditions will be named in the most severe of cases, and according to their impact on health.
The proMETEO Seville Project says in addition to the direct impacts on human health, heatwaves put health systems to the test by increasing the number of emergency hospital admissions - as well as affecting the economy.
"It is not only about raising awareness about what we can or cannot do in the face of extreme heat, but also about developing tools that serve to coordinate all administrations and public services in the face of an alert of this type and propose changes both in infrastructures and in habits of life and work during the hottest months," it adds.
Kathy Baughman-McLeod is director of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Centre, which is collaborating on the project.
She told Moncrieff how it will work.
"We helped come up with, with our science teams, a two-track process.
"One is to categorise the heatwaves, and those categories are connected to the expected impact to the health of the community.
"And the second track is to name the heatwave".
There will be three different categories - with a category three being the most severe.
"Every category three gets a name - and the names go backwards up from 'Z' to 'A' in the Spanish alphabet.
"The first one's name is Zoe."
She says the system will offer specific advice to people.
"They all come with increased risk to your health - they're specifically giving you instructions on what to do to protect yourself.
"So how much water to drink - not just more water, but how much more. Should you be outside at all?
"These categories are linked to a specific community - so you would have a category system which is the same methodology, but it would fit for specific areas of Ireland, or would fit specifically for different parts of the world.
"It's the temperatures and conditions that are different in each one, but it's the same approach".
And Kathy says heat and its effects is killing more people than any other climate-driven hazard.
"It's silent and it's invisible - and it doesn't rip the roof off your house like a hurricane, you don't see cars floating down the street like a flood.
"And so it needs a PR agency, it needs someone who wakes up every day thinking about how to protect people from heat."
Seville is part of a group of cities worldwide involved in action projects against heat - along with Melbourne, Athens, Los Angeles and New York.
