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

卫生和社会保健系统以及支持这些系统的基础设施的运作可能受到气候变化的影响，特别是洪水、热浪和风暴等与天气有关的灾害日益频繁和严重。最近发生的极端气候事件对老年人的健康产生了重大影响。65岁以上的人在英国总人口中所占的比例越来越大。因此，我们面临着一项重大挑战，即如何使基础设施适应气候变化的影响，而基础设施是为老年人服务的卫生和社会系统所必需的。本项目将重点关注这一挑战。该项目旨在制定一种方法，在2050年之前选择有效的适应战略，以确保支持老年人福祉的基础设施以及卫生和社会护理系统（即，65岁及以上的人）将有足够的复原力，能够承受气候变化的有害影响。这将在利益攸关方的积极参与下实现，并通过案例研究加以证明。该问题涉及气候变化，社会人口趋势和基础设施性能，因此该研究将由达勒姆大学和埃里奥特瓦特大学的多学科团队进行，结合工程，气候建模，健康和医疗保健研究以及澳大利亚纽卡斯尔大学的专业知识。工作方案将分为五个阶段：第一阶段-确定最易受气候变化相关危害影响的地区;第二阶段-确定城乡环境中老年人高度集中、社会经济条件各异的研究社区;第三阶段-确定选定研究地点的卫生和社会保健系统以及已建基础设施的关键要素;第4阶段-确定设计和管理解决方案，包括对其生命周期成本进行概率评估，以提高卫生/社会保健系统和相关基础设施的弹性;第5阶段-传播：关于适应战略的知识交流，建立当地能力和风险缓解战略。我们还将利用代表各种利益相关者的广泛的国际顾问网络组通过特别关注对老年人重要的基础设施，考虑农村和城市环境，并让利益相关者参与研究以及结果的用户，我们的项目补充并扩展了ESRC和EPSRC资助的其他最近关于气候变化影响的研究。我们将致力于在地方，国家和国际上传播我们的研究成果，以无障碍的形式，向关键的知情人，利益相关者和国际专家。虽然我们的实用建议将在我们的研究领域具有本地相关性，但将开发的方法是通用的，可以应用于英国其他确定的地区，其中可能适用类似的条件。我们制定的战略的方法和一般方面也将对规划和政策以及关于风险的社会和物理决定因素的学术辩论具有国际意义。

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.