Engaging residents to address heat risk in social housing

Within the RETURN project, Eurac Research applied the approach behind Adattamento ai cambiamenti climatici: come coinvolgere le comunità in a case study at the Casette Inglesi residential complex in Bolzano. The work focused on how residents, especially older people, experience increasing summer heat, which coping strategies they already use, and which measures could help improve wellbeing in the future. The guide itself is designed to help local authorities involve communities in the preparation, implementation, and monitoring of climate adaptation strategies and plans.

To do so, researchers combined interviews with indoor environmental monitoring, measuring temperature, humidity, CO2, PM2.5, and TVOC in the apartments during the hottest part of summer 2024. The case study showed that residents already adopt several effective everyday practices, while also highlighting concerns, uncertainty, and limits in their ability to respond to future heatwaves. Supported by IPES, the process generated useful insights not only for understanding lived experiences of heat, but also for informing future maintenance and adaptation measures in social housing.