- Choo-Yoon Yi, Building Physics and Liveability researcher and AXA Research Fund Fellow
- Chengzhi Peng, Senior Lecturer and Director of Postgraduate Research at Sheffield School of Architecture
With respect to the changing environmental conditions and extreme heat events associated with climate change, this article presents a review of existing heat-health warning systems and discusses how such systems can be further augmented to account for indoor environmental conditions. The development of indoor heat-health warning systems is urgently needed to enhance the health and social care for vulnerable populations who spend long hours indoors. As a proof-of-principle study, we first introduce an indoor heat-health warning system developed for the general population in the UK, demonstrating its use case based on the 2013 heatwave event. Focusing on older people living in residential care—one of the most vulnerable populations worldwide—we illustrate the capabilities of an indoor heat- health warning system through a modelling framework which evaluates the impact of climate (change) on a building’s heat and energy performance, from neighbourhood to city scales. An indoor heat-health warning system deployed at care homes should be able to foretell residents’ indoor heat exposures given forecasts of impending heatwave events.
