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The KliMate project, led by the AIT Centre for Technology Experience, is investigating how older people can stay fit despite heat or poor air quality and be motivated to exercise more.
The thermometer shows 30 or 32 degrees or even more – for many older people, this is a reason to stay at home or exercise as little as possible, because that is what has always been recommended. A research team led by the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology is convinced that this is the wrong approach. Especially in old age, regular physical activity is crucial for physical and mental health. The older you get, the more you should make sure you get enough physical activity.
The KliMate research project, led by Diotima Bertel from the AIT's Centre for Technology Experience, is investigating how digital technologies and new social formats, such as the ‘exercise get-together’, can be used to motivate older people to engage in moderate, temperature-appropriate physical activity together. The aim of the research project is to provide people with individualized exercise recommendations specific to their location and weather conditions – these will be developed as part of the project. Despite extreme weather conditions, the goal is to achieve 150 minutes of exercise per week and muscle-strengthening activities twice a week.
Social Experience Research
The project contributes to the Social Experience research focus at AIT. The focus is on the complex question of how technological innovations can best meet diverse social needs while at the same time creating social justice. Another crucial aspect is ecological sustainability. ‘At KliMate, our primary concern is to improve the physical and mental well-being of older people – new technologies can be a great help in this regard,’ explains Diotima Bertel.
The target group (aged 65 and over) was involved in the project from the outset. ‘At KliMate, we rely on the Living Lab method,’ explains researcher Markus Garschall, who brings many years of experience in the development of innovative health technologies to the project. ‘We understand a Living Lab to be a realistic innovation environment – this could be a retirement home, an apartment or a factory – in which new technologies, services or products are developed, tested and refined in a real-life context with the active participation of users and researchers.’ The Living Lab is researching how to empower older people to decide for themselves when and where physical activity is good for them, depending on the weather. An app will also be used for this purpose in the future.
Development of the KliMate App
‘For us, working on KliMate represents another forward-looking activity at the interface between mobile digital technology and user-centered interface design,’ explains Gunther Reisinger, Head of Funding and Research at project partner NOUS. In keeping with the spirit of digital humanism, NOUS is developing the customized KliMate app, which will allow older people to adapt their sporting and health-promoting activities to climatic conditions and record these activities in the app. The web-based application can be used barrier-free on any device and platform. The app stands out because it links exercise recommendations to current weather data, so that each recommendation is weather-appropriate.
As the national weather service and central point of contact for climate research in Austria, GeoSphere Austria provides extensive data and in-depth expertise for the KliMate app. ‘The aim is to offer reliable support to older people aged 65 and over in planning their daily lives – for example, through easy-to-understand weather and environmental information – and thus promote their active mobility in the long term,’ emphasizes Maximilian Weissinger from GeoSphere Austria. In combination with the digital provision of sports and leisure activities in the user's own location, the aim is to increase physical fitness and social participation. Thanks to data from GeoSphere Austria, the daily program can be adapted to any weather conditions.
Studio Dankl, which specializes in co-creation consulting and participatory design development, is supporting the development process in the project: ‘We are making a targeted contribution to promoting climate-adapted exercise in public spaces and implementing international exercise recommendations in a way that is relevant to everyday life and sustainable,’ emphasizes managing director Kathrina Dankl.
Movement groups and model calculation for the whole of Austria
Two exercise groups are working in a targeted and agile process to develop the app and draw up specific exercise recommendations. To this end, the AIT conducted a diary study, which was used for the development process. It is important not only to find new technological formats, but also to think about new social formats. The ‘exercise round table’ developed by the researchers is very popular with older people.
An important partner in KliMate is the Academy for Ageing Research (AAF) at the Haus der Barmherzigkeit. ‘Our next activities will focus on an in-depth analysis of the health and climate-related effects of physical activity in old age,’ explains Thomas Dorner from the Academy for Ageing Research. Together with the Karl Landsteiner Institute for Health Promotion Research (KLI) and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), the AAF is planning a model calculation for Austria. Available data will be used to calculate the extent to which a lack of exercise affects the health of older people. The focus is on the so-called ‘population attributable fraction’ (PAF). This value shows how many diseases or health problems could be avoided if older people exercised sufficiently. The next step will be to investigate how more exercise could also have a positive impact on the climate. The reason: chronically ill people have to go to hospital more often, and hospitals consume a lot of energy and emit a lot of greenhouse gases. So if more exercise means fewer people get sick and have to go to hospital, CO₂ emissions could also be reduced. More exercise therefore has not only health benefits, but also ecological advantages.
KliMate project partners
In addition to the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, the Academy for Ageing Research at Haus der Barmherzigkeit, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences/Institute for Social Ecology (SEC), GeoSphere Austria, the Karl Landsteiner Institute for Health Promotion Research, NOUS Wissensmanagement FlexCo and Studio Dankl are also involved in the project. The project is funded by the FFG. More about the project here: https://kli-mate.at