Technology's ability to tolerate heat is an increasingly important topic as temperatures rise in data centers and enterprise IT ops.
Extreme heat events are no longer just a seasonal inconvenience in traditionally warm climates. They have become a recurring operational risk for enterprise IT. Heat events cause power grids to struggle to meet cooling demand and workers to face the risk of heat exposure.
For senior IT leaders, extreme heat must now be part of planning for enterprise risk, cybersecurity and business continuity. Building the business case for heat resilience includes framing warm weather as a technology, safety and operations problem.
Risk and compliance context
In addition to negatively affecting productivity and operations, heat exposure can lead to legal exposure if the company's response to the heat is noncompliant.
The risks
- Severity. Heat illness ranks among the most dangerous occupational hazards. "What it comes down to is ensuring that one of the most preventable -- and potentially fatal -- occupational illnesses is managed through monitoring and assessing those operational requirements designed to prevent heat illness," said Scott DeBow, director of health, safety and environmental at Avetta, a contractor and supplier management software company headquartered in Lehi, Utah.
- Regional variation. Risk also varies by region and job. For example, there is a difference between a worker acclimated to Arizona summers and one used to Michigan's cooler climate, DeBow said. "Setting a fixed temperature threshold across the country isn't enough," he said.
- Infrastructure strain. Extreme heat strains infrastructure that must be kept cool. "Many companies assume that indoor operations are safe as a result of the facilities possessing sophisticated industrial cooling technologies," said Yaz Palanichamy, senior research analyst at Infotech Research Group, an IT research and advisory company located in Ontario, Canada. "However, in the event of regional extreme heat, this could potentially cause localized electrical grids to be pushed to the breaking point."
- Data center heat. Rising outdoor temperatures require data centers to remain cool, and the output travels to the neighborhoods around them. Earlier this year, Arizona State University researchers measured air temperatures around four data centers near Phoenix and found that heat pollution increased air temperatures in downwind areas by up to four degrees Fahrenheit.
- Policy drift. A gap also tends to exist between a company's written heat policy and its daily practices. "The most common gap I've observed is assuming that because there is a written program addressing a risk -- heat illness, in this case -- that the operational practices and rhythms remain aligned with written policy," DeBow said. "Turnover; differences between first, second and third shifts; new equipment; and malfunctioning equipment all continually change the risks associated with heat illness."
- Workforce coverage. Many companies' heat policies are based on the idea that all employees are full-time, yet that's often not the case. "Today's industrial workforce includes a mix of direct employees, contractors and third-party labor, yet many heat plans were built around a traditional employer-employee relationship," DeBow said.
The compliance picture
Companies must be aware of the latest government requirements about heat as well as local sentiment around issues like data center construction.
- Federal enforcement. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) original National Emphasis Program on heat hazards was released in 2022 and was set to lapse on April 8, 2026. OSHA canceled it and released a new program that will be in place through April 2031. Separately, there was an informal public hearing for OSHA's proposed standard "Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings" in 2025. In the meantime, companies should start increasing their monitoring and documentation capabilities.
- Community pushback. Local opposition to data centers has led to problems securing permits and rejections from officials. A 2026 Gallup poll found that seven in 10 Americans oppose the building of new data centers near them.
The heat resilience tech stack
Making companies as heat-resilient as possible requires a multi-layered approach.
An enterprise heat action plan typically draws on four company groups, Palanichamy said:
- Environmental, health and safety teams monitor regional climate risk and site safety compliance.
- Operations and facilities management maintains aspects such as building insulation and heat shielding around machinery.
- IT oversees the sensors, cloud platforms and communication tools that automate site-level alerts about heat.
- A sustainability or environmental, social and governance steering committee ties heat metrics to broader corporate climate goals.
Technologies are also emerging across multiple areas that can help companies improve their heat resilience. They include the following:
- Sensing and monitoring. This category includes both fixed sensors and devices that workers wear on the job. For example, wearable tech could report on heart rate and skin temperature, DeBow said. However, those devices raise governance, privacy and consent concerns.
- Analytics and notifications. Analytics and notifications software alerts supervisors if an environmental threshold is breached.
- Facilities and operational technology (OT) integration. Integrating building management systems with analytics tools makes the biggest difference at this layer, Palanichamy said.
Getting every part of that stack to communicate can be a challenge but is crucial for success.
"The element that makes the biggest difference is unified data integration and governance between IT and OT," said Alex Hill, senior manager at Sendero, a management consulting firm located in Dallas. "Deploying individual sensors or software packages in isolation creates fragmented views that stall decision-making during a crisis."
ROI, metrics and roadmap
To continue securing funding, CIOs need proof that their organization's heat resilience efforts are working.
Measuring what matters
Not every metric should carry equal weight.
"Among the more obvious ways [to measure heat resilience] is to look historically at how many heat illnesses and injuries have occurred over a period of time, such as a 36-month review," DeBow said. "These lagging indicators, or post-incident reviews, can be informative and describe what happened but fall short of prescribing what should be done."
A stronger approach involves pairing history with preventive action.
"The better approach that will improve prevention involves targeted metrics focused on monitoring, adjusting scheduling to better manage heat and even engineering reviews of the impact from machinery or other heat sources," DeBow said.
Other standard KPIs for tracking a heat resilience plan include the following:
- Heat-related incident rate and near misses.
- Productivity loss.
- Accident rate reduction.
- Regulatory findings.
- Insurance premiums.
- Employee retention and absenteeism.
Simple operational signals matter, too.
"Properly maintained systems will run efficiently, even under higher demand," said Dave Schaible, chief operating officer at Radix IoT, an IoT software vendor located in Dallas. "When systems are neglected, efficiency or higher energy consumption can be a leading indicator of underlying problems that will lead to failures or downtime."
Timing the risk
A new worker's first week carries the highest risk.
"For any enterprise heat action plan, an organization will need to track a strict seven- to 14-day acclimatization period for any work [in which the employee is] transitioning towards working in hot environments or returning from an extended leave of absence," Palanichamy said.
Building the business case
Justifying the investment requires CIOs and other leaders to present the right data.
"The metric that stands out in evaluating grid resilience investments is the benefit-to-cost ratio, which compares the total cost of implementing a resilience measure against the avoided cost of a customer outage," Hill said.
Roadmap
The plans for heat resilience that hold up over time follow a consistent structure.
"Ultimately, an enterprise heat action plan establishes a repeatable decision pathway, moving the organization consistently from risk classification to prioritization to investment to execution," Hill said.
Sean Michael Kerner is an IT consultant, technology enthusiast and tinkerer. He has pulled Token Ring, configured NetWare and been known to compile his own Linux kernel. He consults with industry and media organizations on technology issues.
