Expert interview

• Professor Gupta also contributed to an expert interview with the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST), highlighting the need to better align net-zero policy with passive cooling, indoor environmental monitoring and equity-sensitive climate adaptation. The discussion focused on three key principles:

  1. • Moving beyond mapping outdoor climate hazards to understanding people’s actual exposure to heat within buildings.

     • Recognising how care settings, housing quality and tenure can shape vulnerability and people’s capacity to adapt to extreme heat.

     • Integrating net-zero retrofit with measures to reduce summertime overheating, prioritising passive approaches such as solar shading and ventilation, alongside low-energy solutions such as ceiling fans.

Invited keynote

• Rajat Gupta delivered a keynote on Indoor air quality, overheating and health at the Building Pathology Conference 2026 (BP26), hosted by H+R SOCOTEC Building Pathology and Heritage in partnership with Oxford Brookes University, Oxford (10-11 September 2026), under the theme "Solving tomorrow's problems today."

• The two-day programme brought together researchers, practitioners, and industry leaders, with sessions on property flood resilience, heritage retrofit, overheating risk, fire modelling and moisture management.

Invited talk and seminar

• Lizzy Curtis from  the Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) team presented key research insights from HEARTH, ARCADE, and THERM-UK programmes, alongside work led by Dale Hoyland at the Local Government Association’s webinar, Turning Ambition into Action: Decarbonising Health and Social Care Locally, on 16 September 2026.

  • • The session explored key opportunities, challenges, and current activities surrounding the decarbonisation of local health and social care infrastructure.

• • • The OCC presentation highlighted collaborative research delivered across the HEARTH, ARCADE, and THERM-UK programmes, sharing high-level early insights from room monitoring and observational research across participating retirement housing, care homes, and extra-care housing schemes. These included emerging findings on indoor temperatures, building performance, and current heat adaptation practices.

    • It also showcased the strategic work of the Retrofit Strategy team in Oxfordshire, highlighting the council's vital role in supporting participant recruitment and fostering cross-sector collaboration between local authorities, care providers, and academic partners, generating evidence to inform future policy and practice for healthy, net-zero, and climate-resilient homes and care settings.

Poster presentation

• • The HEARTH team from the University of Leeds, Professor Cathryn Birch and Dr Carly Reddington, presented a poster on their analysis of past and future UK humid heatwaves at the National Climate Impacts, Risk and Adaptation Meeting in Leeds (8–9 September 2026). The presentation showcased an assessment of UK humid heatwave events from 1980 to 2026, featuring detailed case studies of the July 2022 and June 2026 heatwaves alongside preliminary projections of future humid heatwave risk using UKCP18 climate model data.

• The poster generated valuable cross-sector discussions with climate and energy researchers, including colleagues from the Met Office and Newcastle University, around the challenges humid heatwaves pose to national energy systems. 

• Discussions highlighted the potential for increased electricity demand for cooling and air conditioning during periods of extreme heat and humidity, alongside the risks of power outages and associated challenges for energy system resilience.

• Further discussions with University of Bristol researchers focused on the health impacts of humid heatwaves, highlighting the broad relevance of this work and opening several promising avenues for future research collaboration.

HEARTH Annual Assembly, 7-9 September 2026, Oxford Brookes University

In September 2026, HEARTH hosted its three-day Annual Assembly (7–9 September) at Oxford Brookes University, bringing together researchers, external stakeholders and international advisers to share emerging findings, review research progress and identify priorities for advancing heat resilience. The Assembly began with the HEARTH International Symposium 2026: Building Heat Resilience – From Evidence to Action, followed by the second meeting of the HEARTH External Advisory Board and project team meetings. Together, these activities provided opportunities to review progress across HEARTH's five workstreams, strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration and align ongoing research with strategic adaptation priorities and practical actions to support health, climate resilience and the transition to net zero.

HEARTH International Symposium: Building Heat Resilience – From Evidence to Action, 7 September 2026

• The event brought together over 55 delegates, spanning key central government departments (DESNZ, DEFRA), public health bodies (UKHSA, Public Health Wales, Public Health Scotland), NHS trusts, local authorities (GLA, Oxfordshire County Council), industry bodies (CIBSE, NHMF), and international academic partners including MIT, Maastricht University, and Ashok B Lall Architects.

HEARTH International Symposium: Building Heat Resilience – From Evidence to Action,  Oxford Brookes University, 7 September 2026

• Key insights from HEARTH International Symposium:

  • • Public health priority: Emphasised framing extreme heat as a core public health and resilience challenge rather than purely a matter of indoor thermal comfort or energy efficiency.

    • Communication: Heat risk is often underestimated. Effective action requires clear policy communication, locally relevant public messaging and greater understanding of vulnerable populations and adaptive capacity.

    • Whole-year retrofit strategy: Highlighted risks of winter-focussed energy retrofits inadvertently causing summer overheating; advocated for passive-first design (shading, ventilation) complemented by targeted active cooling where necessary.

    • Multifunctional solutions: Interventions should deliver multiple benefits together: net zero + heat resilience + health + biodiversity, rather than focusing on energy performance alone.

• HEARTH project team meeting, Oxford Brookes Universiy, 8–9 September 2026

  • • The HEARTH project team and international advisers came together for two days of discussions to review research progress across all five workstreams, strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration and align ongoing activities with the Hub's strategic Theory of Change and adaptation priorities.

    • Key technical discussions focused on developing and evaluating care home building archetypes, investigating targeted physiological cooling strategies to reduce heat-related health risks, and assessing the trade-offs between winter energy efficiency and summertime overheating in building retrofit strategies.

    • International advisers emphasised the importance of recognising overheating as a health, safety and welfare issue within relevant regulatory frameworks, integrating passive cooling with targeted active cooling where necessary, and developing practical, sector-specific adaptation guidance for NHS trusts, care homes and prisons.

HEARTH Project team meeting,  Oxford Brookes University, 9 September 2026