Global warming is increasingly causing extreme weather events, such as heat waves. One-way heat waves are problematic in society, particularly in urban areas, is because of their negative impact on vulnerable groups including elderly people and children. Organizations such as municipalities that are responsible for local schools, day care centres and/or elderly homes, may struggle to provide the necessary care and function during extreme heat waves. This work explores how remote sensing images providing historical data of land surface temperatures (LST) can be used to create summer urban heat island maps and heat wave intensity, and in the longer run, how such information could be used by municipalities and other actors to mitigate effects of future heat waves. The method presented in this study was used to detect the “hot spots” in two participating Swedish municipalities and identify the municipal services located within these spots based on MODIS (1 km) and Landsat (30 m) LST datasets. Furthermore, this study showed that urban heat island phenomenon existed in the two participating municipalities. In general, this methodology can be applicable at both local and regional scale, although it might require additional site-specific data. © Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.