Five events.Four days.One hot question.

Roundtable with C40 Mayors

A closed-door roundtable co-hosted by C40 Cities and Harvard University’s Salata Institute, with support from partners including the Atlantic Council. Mayors and city leaders from Paris, Jakarta and Freetown sat down with experts in public health, data, insurance and risk transfer, community resilience, humanitarian response, philanthropy and academia.

The focus: extreme heat and early-warning systems, and how cities can build and improve them through partnership. The Balsari Lab showcased CrisisReady and the HeatReady API to show how climate and vulnerability data can become localized measures of heat exposure, helping cities find at-risk communities and target public-health responses.

The heat is on: can business keep up?

Satchit Balsari joined Dr. Sally Uren OBE, Executive Director and Chief Acceleration Officer at Forum for the Future, and Scott Tew, Global Head of Sustainability Strategy at Trane Technologies, in a conversation moderated by Ginger Zee, Chief Meteorologist and Chief Climate Correspondent at ABC News.

The panel examined how extreme heat is affecting workers, productivity, supply chains and business operations. The discussion considered whether businesses are prepared for a hotter world and how companies can treat worker health and climate resilience as central to their strategies. It also highlighted the need for collaboration among businesses, governments, researchers and communities as the health and economic consequences of heat become increasingly difficult to ignore.

Is it too hot to thrive?

The Balsari Lab played a central role in this afternoon panel on the effects of extreme heat on workers’ health, livelihoods and productivity. Robert Meade presented preliminary findings from the Community HATS study that suggest the heat index inside homes and workplaces can exceed measurements from nearby weather stations by as much as 10°C. These exposures are associated with substantial effects on cardiovascular strain, sleep patterns and earnings.

Zoey Laskaris of the City University of New York presented key insights from CUNY’s engagement with gig and platform workers, as well as a forthcoming study examining heat exposure and its effects on health and wages among workers in New York City.

Dr. Satchit Balsari led a panel discussion with Sarita Gupta of the Ford Foundation, Doug Parker of Harvard Law School and formerly OSHA, Prutha Vyas of SEWA, and Jason Glaser of La Isla Network. The panel considered grassroots adaptation, worker organizing, labor standards and policy responses to extreme heat.

The afternoon concluded with a mayoral panel led by Sharon Block of Harvard Law School, featuring Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins and Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, addressing how cities are responding to extreme heat, how they protect workers and residents, and what policies and institutions are needed to prepare for a hotter future.

Kluz Prize for PeaceTech

Dr. Satchit Balsari and Andrew Schroeder joined the 2026 Kluz Prize for PeaceTech as panelists. The event gathered researchers, humanitarian practitioners, technologists, investors and peacebuilding leaders working on emerging technologies that advance peace, strengthen human security and safeguard human dignity.

Patrick Vinck, Research Director at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, was among the recipients of the Kluz Special Distinctions as part of the KoboToolbox team. KoboToolbox was recognized for its longstanding contribution to humanitarian research.

Global Digital Public Goods for the Climate Crisis

CrisisReady and NYU GovLab jointly hosted the discussion on developing and deploying global digital public goods for the climate crisis. Drawing on FloodNet, the HeatReady API and ReadyMapper, they looked at how satellite data, sensors, crowdsourcing and AI-enabled tools help communities identify climate risks, anticipate hazards and understand the resilience of the built environment — what has worked, what remains hard, and how global datasets can complement local knowledge.

The second half turned to closing the gap between data and action: the governance, funding, stewardship, accountability, local capacity and social legitimacy that digital public goods need to drive better decisions and more equitable climate outcomes.