Built Infrastructure for Older People in Conditions of Climate Change (BIOPICCC)

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SummaryThe functioning of health and social care systems and infrastructures supporting them is likely to be influenced by climate change, especially increasing frequency and severity of weather-related hazards such as floods, heat waves and storms. Recent experience of extreme climatic events had significant repercussions for health of older people. People aged over 65 years comprise a growing proportion of the total population in the UK. Thus we face a major challenge concerning how to adapt infrastructures, essential for health and social systems serving the older age group, to impacts of a changing climate. This project will focus on this challenge. The project is aimed to develop a methodology for selecting efficient adaptation strategies during the period up to 2050 to ensure that the infrastructures and health and social care systems supporting well-being of older people (i.e., those aged 65 and over) will be sufficiently resilient to withstand harmful impacts of climate change. This will be achieved with active engagement of stakeholders and demonstrated through case studies. The problem is complex involving climate change, socio-demographic trends, and infrastructure performance, therefore the research will be conducted by a multidisciplinary team from Durham University and Heriot Watt University, combining expertise in engineering, climate modelling, and health and health care research and expertise from University of Newcastle, Australia. The programme of work will be divided into five stages:Stage 1 - Identification of areas most at risk from climate change related hazards;Stage 2 - Identification of study communities with high concentrations of older people and a range of socio-economic conditions, in urban and rural settings;Stage 3 - Identification of key elements of health and social care systems and built infrastructures in selected study sites;Stage 4 - Identification of design and management solutions including a probabilistic evaluation of their life-cycle costs to improve resilience of health/social care systems and related infrastructures; andStage 5 - Dissemination: knowledge exchange on adaptation strategies, building local capacity and risk mitigation strategies.We will also draw on an extensive international network of advisors representing a wide variety of stakeholder groups. By focusing especially on infrastructure that is important for older people, considering rural as well as urban settings, and involving stakeholders as participants in the research as well as users of the results, our project complements and extends other recent studies on impacts of climate change funded by ESRC and EPSRC. We will aim for local, national and international dissemination of our research findings, in accessible formats, to key informants, stakeholders, and international experts. Although our practical recommendations will have local relevance in our study areas, the methodology which will be developed is general and can be applied to other identified areas across the UK, where similar conditions may apply. The approach and general aspects of the strategies we develop will also have international relevance to for planning and policy and for academic debates about the social and physical determinants of risk.