By Alexia Vlachou
As Greece was in the grip of the first heat wave of this summer on Sunday with the temperatures rising to 40 degree Celsius in many parts of the mainland, including the capital Athens, a smartphone application was launched with an aim to reduce heat risks, according to the national meteorological agency EMY.
The app Extrema Athens, available now at both Google Play and Apple Store, was launched by the City of Athens in collaboration with Greece's National Observatory.
It can be used for the assessment of personalized heat risk based on one's profile and location in the city.
"The benefit is that you get personalized estimates of your heat risk and then you get advice based on your profile and also the nearest cooling centers and cool locations that you can access on foot when you are in the city," Iphigenia Keramitsoglou, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing (IAASARS) of the National Observatory of Athens told Xinhua.
According to the researcher, the data that it is collected in the mobile app stays in the app protecting the personal data of each user.
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