On 30 September 2026, the Association of South-Western Municipalities (ASWM) held the fourth meeting of the stakeholder network under the HEATSAFE project, where the Local Action Plan against Extreme Heat for Blagoevgrad Municipality was presented.

The plan was prepared by the project experts and is now in its final stage. It sets out how the municipality should prepare for, respond to and recover from prolonged heatwaves. It identifies the parts of Blagoevgrad most exposed to high temperatures and the groups most at risk: older people, children, people with chronic illnesses and outdoor workers.

Participants were also introduced to the online heat vulnerability mapping tool developed under the project. The tool shows on a map how heat risk is distributed across the territory. Representatives of the institutions shared their feedback, which will help make it more useful in practice.

The tool is available here: https://medheat.interreg-euro-med.eu/index.html 

The main part of the meeting was a working discussion on structuring a heatwave response protocol. Participants shared what their institutions did during this summer's heatwaves, what worked and what fell short, and proposed specific measures for the different warning levels. ASWM will summarise the results, and the protocol will become an annex to the Local Action Plan.

The urban shading already in place was also presented: shade sails over two playgrounds in the Strumsko neighbourhood, which provide shade in the play areas during the hottest hours of the day. The shading is one of the project's pilot measures, together with the network of climate shelters and the real-time temperature sensors.

Watch the video from our HEATSAFE information campaign.

The HEATSAFE project is co-funded by the Interreg VI-B Euro-MED Programme and is implemented in partnership with organisations and institutions from Spain, Greece, Bulgaria, Italy and Albania, including ASWM. ASWM's associated partners in implementing the project activities are Blagoevgrad Municipality and Blagoevgrad Regional Administration.