The physiological and cognitive impacts of extreme temperatures are known in general and mostly for healthy populations, but little is known about how impacts differ across the diversity of the UK population; in particular, those with multiple health conditions, including neurological, who are likely to be the most impacted, and for which interventions (e.g. green spaces) are poorly targeted or non-existent. Furthermore, we do not have tools to integrate available data to understand temperature-health risks nationally and at the necessary individual and household level, and therefore how to target interventions. More broadly, the evidence is lacking to guide policy on the coupled challenges of health inequalities, urban planning and climate change mitigation/adaptation, under uncertain futures of climate and demographic change. Increases in heatwaves are a robust aspect of climate change, with associated increases in health-related deaths. Cold-related mortality has declined with overall warming, yet still far outweighs the increase in heat-related deaths, and the overall burden of cold-related illness and mortality will remain high with an ageing population. Most research on health outcomes has focused on excess mortality rates and limited to broad vulnerability groupings. Health outcomes are, however, much more nuanced, being related to both physical and mental health and exacerbated by underlying conditions including neurological and mental ill health, with exposure related to context specific temperature-humidity thresholds. Therefore, there are significant gaps in our understanding of health risks (including long-term outcomes) for the most vulnerable, and how this relates to the interplay between variability of temperature hazards and outdoor/indoor exposure as driven by socio-economic gradients and mobility. We therefore envisage developing new knowledge and tools for precise risk assessment and targeted interventions, focused on disproportionately impacted groups. By doing so, we will transform our understanding of the drivers of inequalities in temperature related health outcomes and propose using this to inform policy on levelling up and pathways to climate targets. We will realise our vision through an ambitious but feasible, highly multidisciplinary project that is necessary to address this complex problem. Our aim is to transform our understanding of the risk of temperature impacts on health outcomes for vulnerable populations of England and Wales with particular focus on health inequalities, currently and for future scenarios, and identify environmental solutions, directly addressing the overarching funding call objective. Our approach is multi-scale, with high granularity in both space and time: a) linking national scale risk assessment with detailed urban case studies to understand risks at the level of streets/buildings and vulnerable groups; and b) identifying how risks change with future changes in climate, demographics, mobility and health status. National scale assessment will reveal how extremes evolve across climatic gradients and land types, and we will explore the diversity of health outcomes and identify landscape configurations and socio-economic factors that are likely to lead to higher risks, and therefore potential mitigations that are resilient to future change. Community engagement will tease out the nuances of impacts and acceptability of environmental and community-based interventions. This will feed back to the national scale to inform on mitigation, via risk reduction tools for early warning, planning and policy. Our approach will provide a far more nuanced, informed and precise risk assessment than currently exists that will allow targeted interventions to be identified, providing risk reduction where most needed.

Many cities in the world are putting in place their own robust carbon reduction strategies in response to, or in advance of, leadership from central government. As the powerhouses of economic growth, cities use vast amounts of energy and consume resources from hinterlands that stretch across international borders. However, the population density of cities can also provide opportunities for significant efficiencies in terms of the provision of building services and the mobility of people and goods. In this programme of work, we propose to centre our activities on two cities: Xi'an, China and Portsmouth, UK which are notable both for their cultural heritage and for their population density (Portsmouth has the highest population density of any city in the UK). Both cities have published ambitious plans for reducing city-wide carbon emissions but also have large stocks of ageing buildings and infrastructure. This programme of work will: (a) develop an overall understanding of current buildings, mobility and energy services in both cities; (b) identify low disruption and scaled-up retrofit methodologies taking into account the particular characteristics of the two cities; (c) carry out modelling of city-wide retrofit and systems integration, at both the neighbourhood and district scales including building refurbishment, district energy and micro generation geared to improve buildings for their users. In all our modelling and building performance evaluation, we will take into account anticipated climate change projections and the adaptation required to maintain or exceed current levels of thermal comfort. (d) Address adaptive urban logistics to meet mobility needs within the two cities while pursuing carbon reduction targets through a series of targeted workshops with practitioners in the field from both countries. (e) Through a combination of modelling and monitoring, we will identify smart solutions harnessed to inform users and reduce consumption. Crucially, the modelling will be validated by real energy consumption datasets, gathered from both secondary sources (provided by our partners and from others) and primary, from a combination of sensor deployments and surveys. The latter will take the form of monitoring of a sample of multi occupancy buildings for a range of relevant parameters including temperature, power consumption, humidity and carbon dioxide. The building performance data provided by the sensor deployment will be supported by user survey data exploring perceptions of thermal comfort, overall wellbeing (satisfaction with life, health, employment and so on) and attitudes to energy saving and the cost of energy. This will link the purely techno-economic assessment of energy saving interventions to their potential social impacts. The outcomes of this programme will take the form of validated tools and guidance distilled from the project results in order to support city planners in their decision making processes concerning building asset refurbishments and the likely impact on wellbeing resulting from such improvements. A central aspect of the programme will be to foster collaboration and knowledge transfer between both researchers and practitioners in China and the UK. There are areas, for example district heating, of which there is far more experience of in China than the UK, very relevant to densely populated UK cities like Portsmouth. In other areas such as energy efficiency standards for new buildings and building energy assessment techniques, there is potential for knowledge transfer from the UK to China. In the final year of the project a joint UK-China workshop will be held to bring together researchers and practitioners in the fields of planning, energy, building services and local government, in order to disseminate the results of the programme, to test out and receive feedback on the support tools and to foster further collaboration.

Even if opening a window has a limited impact on the environmental conditions in an office, it is often a desirable feature as users are typically more tolerant as they feel they have been able to take action to improve their space. The ability of a user to interact with a façade does not, however, come without risk to the energy performance of a building. In a domestic setting, a householder is directly responsible for the energy bills and would therefore not consciously leave a window open overnight in the winter. In an office environment however, there is no financial driver for the user to operate the façade in the same energy efficient manner. Whilst there may be a strong driver to open a window in an office (stuffiness, high temperature), the driver to close the window (energy awareness) may be very weak unless there is an additional driver such as external noise, rain or a security risk. This poses a real challenge to the facilities manager, 'happy productive users' prefer control of the façade, which is what well designed non-domestic building environments should provide, but providing this control introduces significant energy performance risk. This study proposes to develop and test a low cost, non-invasive technique to assess the impact of poor facade control on energy performance and enable facilities managers to address this issue. We are looking to use external cameras to diagnose the status of a facade in terms of window opening, blind and internal lighting usage and to engage the Facilities Manager, security staff and building users to change the facade state. This approach can help address issues of (1) winter heating losses, (2) summer overheating and (3) poor internal lighting operation. Whilst security guards may provide an effective solution to the problem of energy waste, successful users' behavioural change in managing windows and blinds is very important in non-domestic buildings where there are no guards or where guards cannot intervene due to their narrow remit. All interventions will be developed through a user-centred design approach. Workshops will be conducted at the start of the project, to make sure that the interventions fit both with the technical constraints and with the organisational culture of the buildings where they will be deployed. In particular we will focus on (1) the trade-offs between preserving privacy and sharing information and (2) on the balance between group-level and individual feedback. As far as point (1) is concerned, a privacy-preserving intervention would allow us to send email messages to individuals who left their windows open, in the hope that this will not be done in the future. In contrast, broadcasting to everyone on a given floor in which windows are currently open and need closing would allow users to take action here and now. This second approach may be considered more constructive (rather than reprimand), it would require everyone to know which windows were left open, and by inference who might have left them so. Regarding point (2), our aim is to test whether the effect of individual feedback (e.g. individual emails saying "you left your window open last weekend") can be reinforced by framing it in the context of the general performance of people occupying the same building (e.g. through a public display or an email that is sent to everyone). Designing interfaces and systems which provide and maintain user engagement is the other key theme of this study. Decay in user engagement is a challenge for any behaviour change intervention and often not fully addressed in studies. Here we anticipate strong and sustained engagement with the facilities manager and security staff who are the primary path to energy savings in the building. Engagement with users of buildings such as offices is far more challenging where developed interfaces have to add value to the individual to ensure their sustained use beyond the initial 'novelty / honeymoon' period.

The UK's carbon targets, as defined by the Climate Change Act of 2008, specify an emissions reduction of 80% by 2050, which the government has recently revised down to 'net zero' for the same year. In 2017, 17% of the UK's carbon emissions were associated with non-electric use in the residential sector (64.1 Mt CO2), the majority of which were associated with natural gas space heating, cooking and domestic hot water. The UK must therefore decarbonise residential heat to be able to meet its climate change targets, but, in combination with electric vehicles (EVs), this could lead to a 200-300% increase in the UK's annual electricity demand. In terms of deployment at scale, Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP) operating either in isolation or as a hybrid gas system appear a key technology as they are not site specific and are applicable to both new build housing and retrofit. The UK's low voltage (LV) electricity network will not however, be able to operate with unconstrained electrical heating or EV charging loads. Both loads must be deferrable or scheduled in a manner to support the electricity network and maintain substations and feeders within limits. Household electric heating has the potential to operate as a significant deferrable load which LATENT is seeking to understand and harness. This can provide benefits across scales, namely to the UK (energy security and carbon targets), DNO (Distributed Network Operator as grid support), heat pump suppliers (by demonstrating added grid value), householders (in terms of bill reduction and avoidance of peaking dynamic tariffs) and electricity suppliers by applying aggregation techniques to minimise energy service costs. The key aim of LATENT therefore, is to be able to predict the impact of customers with electrical heating (predominantly ASHP) operating with 3rd party deferrable heating control on the LV network at the feeder / substation level. 3rd party control in this context would be through the energy service supplier, with whom, unlike the DNO, a household has an existing financial contract relationship. LATENT will inform industry of the potential of 3rd party control of deferrable heat through a rigorous field experiment, and, in doing so, accelerate the transition to decarbonised household heating. LATENT will determine the influence of householder personality trait (OCEAN traits: either positive / negative as Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism) alongside more traditional Census metrics such as educational attainment, house type etc to deliver a multi-variate regression model to describe deferrable heat reduction at the household level. A substation or feeder can then be analysed in terms of its household type mix (10% C+ detached, 30% E- flat etc) to produce a composite substation level, deferrable heat reduction estimate. This model will be realised through field trials with LATENT's industrial partner, Igloo Energy. Igloo have a customer base with smart heating systems and ASHP which support remote 3rd party control. LATENT will test (i) householder's stated acceptance to deferral of heating (in terms of temperature drop and duration) through focus groups and surveys, (ii) actual acceptance of heat deferral through heating season field trials, and (iii) operation of a commercial deferrable heat tariff with a sample of Igloo's customer base.

The overarching goal of the project is to generate an enduring and world-class step-change in the transdisciplinary capability of the UK marine policy stakeholder and research community to implement diverse values for decision making and support the sustainable management of the UK's marine resources. Diverse values refer to the many dimensions of value including economic values, social and cultural values, aesthetic values, and natural values and how they might be accounted for in decision-making frameworks such as instrumental values, intrinsic values and relational values. Marine environments and human well-being are inextricably linked through complex and multi-layered socio-ecological systems that span terrestrial, coastal and ocean domains. While this complexity is widely acknowledged in theory, current models of marine resource management practice (which themselves are highly complex, multi-scaled and interconnected) do not adequately adopt the necessary transdisciplinary approaches to use diverse values or have the means to align them to decision making and policy development. The transition to transdisciplinarity and diverse values is a challenge faced by marine science and policy communities worldwide and is acknowledged as a global science priority for the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (UNESCO 2019). It is a cross-cutting challenge which affects all marine management priorities. The inclusion of diverse values, particularly of a qualitative nature, into UK marine management processes is crucial, but at present is outside the experience, capability and comfort zone of many institutions and individuals in the marine management research and practitioner community. The aims of this project drive an innovative agenda of transformational research that both significantly advances our understanding of values-based marine management and which provides actionable tools and approaches that can feed directly into contemporary marine management practice in the UK. Working across three test study sites of Portsmouth / Newhaven, Upper Severn Estuary and the Shetland Islands the aims of this research are: 1. to generate a new conceptual basis for transdisciplinary marine management and research that allows multiple and diverse human values to be incorporated into marine management in the UK. 2. to synthesise existing ecological and economic data with new diverse values approaches (collected using methods from largely outside the marine community) to produce groundbreaking transdisciplinary and holistic understanding of how coastal communities value marine resources and their management. 3. to evaluate, through on-the-ground testing, how diverse values can: 1) be used to unlock the potential of ocean literacy to become an actionable policy tool; and 2) be integrated into marine governance institutions and practices to unlock a step-change in sustainable outcomes. 4. to create and implement a national-scale transition plan to support the UK marine management and research community to mainstream transdisciplinary approaches. A key aim of the project is to create a step-change in the capability of the UK marine sector to consider diverse values and the transdisciplinary approaches needed to operationalise those values. We have approached this by developing a research programme that is focused on co-constructing how diverse values can be used in policy and practice by developing transdisciplinary working practices both within academia and more broadly with diverse stakeholders. The aim of the project is to create a change in the practices of marine management in the UK. The project legacy will be an increased understanding and implementation of diverse values into marine policy and decision making and the creation of transition plans for institutions to facilitate embedding transdisciplinary practices into the operations of organisations.