Summer indoor overheating in Aotearoa New Zealand public housing & impacts on tenants’ health and well-being - PhD Project

In this project PhD candidate Zhiting Chen will investigate how public housing tenants cope with heat in the summer.

Climate change-induced indoor overheating has become a major challenge in ensuring safe, healthy, and resilient indoor environments, particularly in previously unaffected countries with inadequate cooling provisions in conventional housing thermal designs. Indoor overheating can exacerbate housing disparities, with consequent impacts on health inequities and energy poverty. Indoor thermal environment is closely linked to housing quality and thermal performance, and tenants can be disproportionately exposed to the indoor overheating risks while having limited capacity to adopt cooling strategies. This mixed-methods PhD research aims to explore the condition of summertime indoor overheating and its impacts on public housing tenants' health and well-being.

For further information please email sustainablecities@otago.ac.nz