IEDE leads new £2 million project to accelerate climate adaptation of domestic environments
30 January 2025
The new project, led by Prof Anna Mavrogianni, aims to protect heat-vulnerable populations in the UK by improving resilience within homes.

The rising risks of heat in the UK
Climate change is making hot weather more frequent and intense, increasing risks to human health. The UK has been experiencing more heatwaves lately, including a record-breaking heatwave in 2022 where temperatures hit 40°C. This resulted in more than 3,200 excess deaths in England and Wales.
The impact of climate change on human health depends on factors like exposure, vulnerability, inequity, and efforts to address climate change. Studies have found a strong connection between high outdoor temperatures and increased deaths and illness. Older adults and those with health conditions like heart, lung, and neurological problems are most at risk. As the UK’s population ages, an increased number of older adults will face the risk of heat-related health issues.
Why indoor environments matter
Addressing the health effects of heat requires focusing on both outdoor and indoor environments. In cities, Urban Heat Islands can increase heat exposures, underscoring the significance of local urban climate conditions for public health. The indoor environment also greatly affects how people are impacted by heat-related problems as most people, especially older and vulnerable individuals, spend most of their time indoors in different types of housing.
In the UK's pursuit of Net Zero emissions, homes are being upgraded to be more energy efficient and reduce winter fuel poverty. While these upgrades can benefit health, it is crucial to avoid indoor overheating, which could harm vulnerable groups disproportionately. Immediate and ongoing action involving stakeholders, particularly those with relevant experience, is essential to effectively address and prevent heat-related risks in the future.
The ARCADE Project: building resilience to heat in homes
The 'Accelerating Resilience and Climate Adaptation of Domestic Environments for vulnerable populations' (ARCADE) project aims to help decision-makers protect vulnerable individuals in the UK in adapting to climate change within their homes, with a particular focus on older individuals and under-researched housing types. The project will examine various residential settings, including retirement villages and social housing, to understand how people are affected by heat both indoors and outdoors. The ARCADE team, comprising of experts in the built environment, health, and systems thinking will collaborate with policymakers, government agencies, healthcare professionals, and construction industry leaders to address these critical issues. Building on existing knowledge, the project will use a mixed methods approach, combining indoor environment monitoring, occupant surveys, and simulations of indoor and local outdoor environments. This will help assess the vulnerability of the residents to heat-related issues, now and in the future, under different climate change scenarios.
The project will develop tools to evaluate the heat risk and model heat-health impacts using existing statistical data, and also assess the effectiveness and costs of different overheating mitigation measures, both using models as well as interventions (ventilation, shading etc.) in real buildings. Through workshops with key stakeholders, the ARCADE project will help improve decision-making to maximise the climate change adaptation of older, heat vulnerable populations. Improving understanding of how various groups perceive climate change and heat-related risks for older individuals can pave the way for modifying beliefs and policies. By integrating these insights into current policies, decisions can better address the needs of older populations residing in heat-prone residential areas.
Certain population groups will be unequally affected by climate change, in particular heat. Existing climate resilience strategies and comfort standards may not apply to specific housing types that have been understudied to date, such as, for example, retirement villages and their residents. The ARCADE project will focus on those who are most affected by heat and who are so often excluded from the heat-health agenda. Our overarching aim is to support decision-making for maximising the climate change adaptation of UK residential settings occupied by heat-vulnerable people, in particular older individuals, in the context of Net Zero.
To achieve this, we will leverage our well-established network of key decision-makers and stakeholders across national and local government, regulators, the construction industry and communities. We will adopt a solutions-oriented, place-based approach rooted in systems thinking, co-creation and two-way communication with people with lived experience and stakeholders from the outset, including funded collaborations with project output users (London Borough of Waltham Forest and Oxfordshire County Council). Our vision is to create a blueprint for co-designed climate change adaptation of vulnerable populations and settings, helping put the UK at the forefront of systems-based place-focused climate adaptation. - Anna Mavrogianni, project principal investigator.
Who is involved?
The £2 million project will be led by Prof Anna Mavrogianni with Co-Leads from UCL IEDE, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Oxford Brookes University and collaborators at the London Borough of Waltham Forest and Oxfordshire County Council. The team will work closely with the MetOffice and a number of project partners, including the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID), the Greater London Authority (GLA), Greener NHS, The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE), Good Homes Alliance, Shade the UK and construction industry partners and start-ups specialising in passive cooling solutions. The project's advisory board will be chaired by Dr Agostinho Moreira de Sousa, Head of Extreme Events and Health Protection at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).
The project is part of the 'Maximising UK Adaptation to Climate Change' (MACC) programme, a UKRI-Defra £15m investment in research to help the UK prepare for climate change. The ARCADE team will also work directly with the MACC Hub, funded within the same programme, to ensure knowledge exchange between research and policy.
Further information
- UCL IEDE Co-Leads
- London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Co-Leads
- Oxford Brookes University Co-Lead
- Collaborators
- Advisory Board Chair
- Project Partners
- Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ)
- Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)
- Office for Health Improvement and Disparities
- GLA
- Greener NHS
- Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE)
- Good Homes Alliance
- Shade the UK
- Solar-Shield Exterior Shading Solutions
- Shaded Ltd