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BIOPICCC: Built Infrastructure for Older People in Conditions of Climate Change
Prof. Sarah Curtis, Durham University, Dr Dimitry Val, Heriot-Watt University
AIM: To develop a methodology for selecting locally sensitive, 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.
Objectives:
- Identify locations within the UK that are most at risk from relevant aspects of climate change and the nature of the changes.
- Within the zones at greatest risk from climate change, identify ‘case study’ communities (neighbourhoods or small settlements) in urban and rural settings with high concentrations of older people and with a range of socio-economic conditions.
- Engage stakeholders within the selected 'case study' communities and also at national and international levels. With their help, we will determine crucial aspects of living conditions, which sustain well-being of older people, and identify the key elements of health and social care systems and related infrastructures, which are important for maintaining these conditions in the case of weather hazards.
- Identify different design and management solutions, including a probabilistic evaluation of their life-cycle costs, to improve resilience of health/social care systems and related infrastructures with emphasis on the previously identified key elements.
- In collaboration with providers and users of services and other expert informants, develop strategies to integrate these design options into wider procedures and policies and disseminate knowledge about how to adapt built infrastructure to support older people's health and well-being under changing climatic conditions.
Website: BIOPICCC
Further details: Download summary leaflet (pdf, 1.5 MB)
Download the BIOPICCC flyer (pdf, 1.1 MB)
Press release:
- Researchers have mapped areas of England most likely to face more extreme weather events and increasingly elderly populations, and have called on service providers to adjust their planning to meet these challenges. The new maps suggest that many areas in England projected to see an increase in severe weather, such as floods, heatwaves and coldwaves, over the next 30 years, may also need to care for high proportions of vulnerable older people. The findings are relevant to the whole of the UK and other parts of the world where an increase in extreme weather events coupled with population ageing are also expected, the researchers say.
- Scientific paper: Oven, K. J., et al, Climate change and health and social care: Defining future Hazard, vulnerability and risk for infrastructure systems supporting older people’s health care in England, Applied Geography (2011), doi:10.1016/j.apgeog.2011.05.012.
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