Kent researchers have been awarded £1.5 million from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to save school playtime from the global warming impacts of climate change.
Professor Marialena Nikolopoulou from the School of Architecture, Design and Planning is leading a three-year collaboration to produce new mathematical models and guidelines that will advise how schools can better design playgrounds in a way that is more comfortable across different seasons. The guidance will inform policy-makers, planners and building professionals, and help to deliver active, healthy lifestyles for children.
Children spend 30% of their time at school and 30% of that time in playgrounds. It’s well-recognised that outdoor play and learning is important for their health, wellbeing and cognitive development but children are often identified as a vulnerable group with respect to heat-health and climate change. With 15 national heat records having been broken in this year alone, it’s vital that we develop an understanding of the impact of outdoor exposure on children in a warming world so that spaces, like playgrounds, can be designed specifically for the thermal comfort and heat health of children.
To address this, Professor Nikolopoulou will work with Dr Christos Efstratiou, Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing, to develop design guidelines along with machine learning algorithms to inform new guidance and outdoor thermal comfort models for children. These will be based on data from school surveys, climate chamber studies, microclimate simulations and future climate change scenarios produced in collaboration with researchers from Brunel University, Loughborough University and the University of Portsmouth.
The project will involve a wide range of stakeholders from the built environment, including the Department for Education, Greater London Authority, London Climate Change Programme, The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers, Atkins, Arup and the Met Office.
The project is funded by the UKRI Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through an £80 million investment to boost fundamental research, enhance UK leadership in science and technology, and deliver life-changing breakthroughs for society and growth. It’s expected that when the project is complete, the outputs will be made available to schools and used to inform industry programmes and standards.
Professor Nikolopoulou said: ‘We are still designing spaces based on models typically assuming an average sized adult man, which is far from the reality and largely inappropriate. To be truly inclusive we need to start considering the diversity of users and this becomes critical in a school environment. Our sChOOL Yard project addresses this challenge to deliver spaces promoting outdoor activity for increased wellbeing and cognitive development, and are resilient to climate change.’