The climate is changing – and so are we
With a grant of 3.1 million kroner from the Independent Research Fund Denmark, Associate Professor Vedran Sekara from the IT University of Copenhagen will map how human behaviour and mobility are changing in response to climate change.
Vedran SekaraResearchdata sciencegrants
Written 29 October, 2025 11:28 by Theis Duelund Jensen
How do people react when temperatures rise, rain pours down in torrents, or wildfires fill the air with smoke? That’s the central question in the research project ClimateAdapt, which has just received funding from the Independent Research Fund Denmark. Led by Associate Professor Vedran Sekara, the project aims to understand how climate change affects our collective behaviour – especially our movement patterns.
“We know the climate is changing. It’s not a question of if, but how,” says Sekara. “But we know very little about how people actually adapt to those changes in practice. How does our mobility shift when the weather becomes extreme?”
GPS data as a key to human behaviour
If we know that a two-degree temperature rise changes our collective behaviour in a specific way, we can prepare better.
Vedran Sekara
Sekara works with large volumes of anonymised GPS data from countries like the US and countries in Europe. These datasets reveal how millions of people move through their daily lives – working, shopping, doing social activities. By matching these movement patterns with local climate events such as heatwaves, cloudbursts, and changing humidity levels, researchers hope to map out how behaviour changes.
“Mobility is one of the best indicators of human behaviour,” Sekara explains. “When we go shopping, visit friends, or commute to work, we move. That’s why mobility data is a strong proxy for both social and economic activity.”
The project builds on previous research and datasets that have already shown weather has a clear impact on how people use transport apps and navigate urban spaces. But Sekara stresses that behavioural changes don’t necessarily follow a linear logic.
“We don’t just see people moving less when it gets warmer. It depends on how warm it gets. A one-degree increase from 20 to 21°C might boost activity, but from 35 to 36°C it drops sharply. It’s not a simple curve – it’s complex.”
Models for future decision-makers
The ambition behind ClimateAdapt is not only to understand the present, but also to predict the future. By developing models based on observed behavioural changes, Sekara hopes to provide decision-makers with tools to plan society’s adaptation to a warmer and more extreme climate.
“If we know that a two-degree temperature rise changes our collective behaviour in a specific way, we can prepare better,” he says. “We want to build models that help governments and urban planners make smart decisions.”
The project also has a strong ethical focus. The data is anonymised and complies with both European and American legislation. Sekara emphasises that the research is about collective patterns – not individual privacy.
“We have no interest in snooping into people’s lives. We want to understand how society as a whole responds to climate change,” he says.
ClimateAdapt is the first step in a broader vision. Sekara is already seeking additional funding to expand the research and explore how data and models can promote climate-friendly behaviour.
“This is the first brick in a larger structure,” he says. “We need to understand how we adapt – and how we can do it better.”
Theis Duelund Jensen, Press Officer, phone +45 2555 0447, email thej@itu.dk