Managing at Home in Times of Crisis: How Climate, COVID-19 and Cost of Living Crises Intersect in Everyday Life and What We Can Do About It

近年来，英国本已脆弱的社会制度受到外部冲击：生活成本危机、气候危机和新冠肺炎。这些冲击直接塑造了家庭的日常生活：造成经济困难、健康状况不佳和社会孤立。它们还暴露了我们的住房基础设施不足以承受高温、减少疾病传播、提供良好的室内空气质量，以及在能源价格高企的情况下为人们避暑避寒。人们在家庭环境中花费了大量的时间：多达他们生活的三分之二，因此这对健康和福祉的影响是至关重要的。我们发现，家庭应对这些危机的方式可能会对他们的环境和/或他们的健康产生意想不到的或相互矛盾的后果。例如，一些缓解高能源成本的策略可能会造成恶劣的室内环境，对健康造成长期影响。尽管人们关注的是室外空气质量，但越来越明显的是，直到最近，室内空气污染在很大程度上一直被忽视。室内空气质量包括潮湿和霉菌，这两个问题在不太富裕和不太温暖的家庭中都是重要的问题。这个博士项目采用跨学科的整体系统方法来解决这些问题，利用监督团队的综合专业知识，并支持学生跨学科边界进行思考。家庭和日常生活是该项目的中心，我们希望候选人将其作为一个空间，在其中探索这些交叉的危机是如何管理和体验的。实证的重点将是英国各种低收入家庭，重点是了解房屋的工程设计，人们如何以不同的方式管理他们的家庭环境，以及技术、实践和监管对他们的健康和福祉有什么连锁反应。我们将鼓励应聘者识别加剧影响(例如，由于试图保暖而缺乏通风而导致霉菌生长)和良性循环(例如，在炎热的天气获得凉爽的温度及其对健康的影响)。他们将对不同类型的家庭管理的结果以及发生这些结果的社会人口模式有所了解。例如，我们知道与烹饪相关的做法会对室内空气质量产生影响，不同的家庭根据生活方式、种族和其他因素做饭的方式也非常不同。除了这些社会方面，该项目还将研究物理环境特征，包括建筑设计、供暖和通风系统，以及这如何影响能源使用和室内空气质量参数。在这项研究中，我们希望利用一系列的主要和次要数据。这将包括关于建筑物类型、建筑和工程系统的数据；特定建筑物随时间的室内空气质量；正在研究的城市领域的外部空气质量；关于燃料贫困的生活经历的定性数据；以及关于特定社区的定量人口数据(通过人口普查获得，以及多重剥夺指数)。作为该项目的一个影响驱动的结果，我们预计候选人将起草政策建议，以指导有效管理一系列有利于健康和福祉的家庭环境。我们还可以提供机会，与利兹市议会、住房协会和英国住房管理局等一系列对项目结果感兴趣的利益攸关方更密切地合作。最后，我们在丹麦建筑研究所奥尔堡大学的国际合作伙伴，包括一个致力于建筑和居住实践的跨学科学者领导小组，热衷于为候选人举办一次机构访问。

In recent years, households in the UK have been rocked by external shocks to our already delicate social system: the cost of living crisis, the climate crisis and COVID-19. These shocks have directly shaped the everyday lives of households: creating financial hardship, ill health and social isolation. They have also exposed our housing infrastructure as inadequate to withstand high temperatures, to reduce disease spread, to provide good indoor air quality, and to shelter people against the heat and cold in the context of high energy prices. People spend a substantial amount of their time in the home environment: up to 2/3 of their life, and as such its effect on health and wellbeing is critical.We find that the ways in which households respond to these crises can have unintended or contradictory consequences for their environment and/or their health. For example, some strategies to mitigate high energy costs can create poor indoor environments with long lasting health effects. Despite the focus on outdoor air quality, it is increasingly clear that indoor air pollution has been largely ignored until recently. Indoor air quality includes damp and mould both of which are significant issues in less affluent and underheated homes.This PhD project takes an interdisciplinary whole systems approach to addressing these problems, drawing on the combined expertise of the supervisory team, and supporting the student to think across disciplinary boundaries. The home and everyday life is at the centre of the project, and we expect the candidate to use this as a space in which to explore how these intersecting crises are managed and experienced. The empirical focus will be on diverse range of low-income households in the UK, with an emphasis on understanding the engineering design of homes, how people manage their home environment in different ways, and what knock-on effects technologies, practices and regulations have on their health and wellbeing. We will encourage the candidate to identify exacerbating effects (e.g. mould growth as a result of lack of ventilation due to attempts to keep warm) and virtuous circles (e.g. access to cool temperatures in hot weather and their impact on health). They will develop an understanding of the outcomes of different kinds of household management, and the socio-demographic patterns with which these occur. For instance, we know that practices associated with cooking have an impact on internal air quality, and that different households cook very differently, according to lifestage, ethnicity and other factors. Alongside these social aspects, the project will look at the physical environment characteristics including the building design, heating and ventilation systems and how this affects both energy use and indoor air quality parameters. We expect to draw on a range of primary and secondary data in this study. This will include data on building types, construction and engineering systems; indoor air quality over time in specific buildings; external air quality in the urban domain under study; qualitative data on lived experience of Fuel Poverty; and quantitative demographic data on specific neighbourhoods (available through the census, and index of multiple deprivation). As an impact-driven outcome to the project, we will expect the candidate to draft policy recommendations for guidance on effectively managing a range of home environments for health and wellbeing. We also can offer the opportunity to work more closely with a range of stakeholders interested in the outcomes of the project throughout, including Leeds City Council, housing associations and UKHSA. Finally, our international partners at the Danish Building Research Institute, Aalborg University, which includes a leading group of interdisciplinary academics working on buildings and resident practices, are keen to host an institutional visit for the candidate.