AdapT- Infrastructure Council Chair for Adapting Local Buildings to Heat Waves
Description
Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of heat waves and power outages, directly endangering the health and safety of populations, particularly the most vulnerable.
Currently, during these events, many local facilities (schools, libraries, community centers) close their doors, forcing users to return home. However, the homes of low-income individuals and their children are often just as ill-equipped to handle these critical events. Elementary schools, which are well distributed throughout the region, could play a key role as shelters. Adapting schools to heat waves would help ensure environmental conditions conducive to children’s learning throughout the school year and would provide children from less affluent backgrounds with respite from extreme heat.
However, several challenges remain:
- the frequent lack of air conditioning in Quebec schools;
- technical and economic constraints that limit major interventions;
- a lack of quick, accessible solutions tailored to the existing housing stock;
- an as yet insufficient understanding of the multiscale interactions (building, schoolyard, urban climate) that influence children’s thermal comfort.
In this context, it is essential to develop integrated approaches to adapt schools and other community buildings to extreme heat events and strengthen their role in building community resilience.
Objectives
- Developing integrated multiscale models: Coupling building, urban microclimate, and physiology models to better predict children’s comfort and thermal stress, both indoors and outdoors.
- Characterize current conditions: Assess the thermal conditions of elementary schools and their playgrounds throughout Quebec, taking into account different layouts and climatic contexts.
- Identify and propose adaptation solutions: Develop and evaluate effective, low-cost, and rapidly deployable cooling strategies tailored to the constraints of school environments.
Overall Role of the Chair
This chair serves as a center of interdisciplinary expertise dedicated to adapting local infrastructure to climate change.
It plays a central role in:
- Developing advanced scientific tools (microclimate models, energy simulations, comfort indices tailored to children);
- Generating evidence to understand high-risk areas and the conditions that lead to heat stress;
- Developing practical guidelines for designers, urban planners, and school infrastructure managers;
- Accelerating the transfer of knowledge to partners (school service centers, construction professionals, decision-makers);
- Helping to transform schools into resilient facilities that can serve as shelters in the event of extreme heat or an energy crisis.
Ultimately, the Chair aims to strengthen the resilience of local infrastructure and tangibly improve children’s living conditions and safety in the face of climate change.
Don’t just coexist with climate change.
