Rising global temperatures and intensified heat waves pose a critical and growing risk to the health and sustained well-being of the elderly, whose ability to adapt to extreme heat is physiologically compromised. The increasing desire for ageing-in-place mandates that the residential built environment evolves to support the thermal resilience and healthy ageing of this vulnerable population. This research addresses the need to integrate climate change adaptation strategies into elderly housing, specifically focusing on the role of housing from the perspective of the elderly.
Based on data gathered from a survey of 1755 community-dwelling elderly people in Auckland, the research established the most immediate health consequences of heat, identifying feeling tired, difficulty in sleeping, and personal discomfort as the most frequent effects. The study also mapped the diverse adaptive strategies currently employed by the elderly, categorising them into three core groups: body-related, activity-related, and home-protective behaviours. Furthermore, the elderly participants ranked the housing features they perceived as most effective, highlighting the importance of having heating/cooling appliances, adequate insulation, the presence of shadings/awnings, and double-glazed windows.
These findings were synthesised to develop an empirical framework of the adaptation of the elderly to the rising temperature. This framework maps the relationships between the elderly’s perception of heat effects, their adaptive actions, and the importance placed on specific residential features. In addition, this framework has been successfully adopted and utilised in subsequent research, serving as the conceptual foundation for studies that sought to validate the multi-dimensional factors affecting independent living and to model the causal factors influencing the elderly’s temperature-focussed climate adaptive capacity using structural equation modelling. The findings of this study improve our understanding of the role that housing plays in making the elderly living independently in a community adaptive to heat from rising temperatures.