sChOOL YARD: Outdoor thermal comfort models for children

Children spend 30% of their time in school. Thermal comfort in classrooms has been extensively researched but we know little about outdoor exposures, like those taking place in school playgrounds where children may spend up to one third of their time at school. Outdoor play is important for children's health and wellbeing and outdoor learning experiences are effective in developing cognitive skills. Many of the playgrounds are in dense urban areas where the outdoor temperatures are exacerbated. Children are one of the population groups most disproportionately affected by the extreme climatic conditions and regularly identified as a vulnerable group with respect to heat-health and climate change.

In the design and evaluations of children's spaces, typically, adult heat budget models are used scaled to children's proportions. These models may be resulting in large discrepancies in comfort as well as physiological strain for the children population, due to the inaccurate assumptions employed in the models and due to their lack of a children-based validation. Therefore, there is an urgent need to better understand children's thermal comfort in outdoor spaces, particularly schoolyards, to deliver spaces that are effective in promoting outdoor activity and keep children safe across the seasons, especially given the increasingly frequent hot periods.

The project aims to develop models and guidelines that ensure outdoor spaces in schools provide comfort conditions which reflect children's thermal state, along with preferences and expectations and are resilient to climate change. The research objectives are the development of outdoor thermal comfort models for children and thresholds for thermal comfort, while accounting for different forms of adaptation and habituation specifically for children, to evaluate the potential impact of different climate change scenarios, concluding with the development of guidance for the design of the schools' open spaces. This will be achieved by the complementary expertise of four UK universities (Kent, Brunel, Loughborough and Portsmouth) supported by the Department for Education (DfE), Greater London Authority (GLA), London Climate Change Programme (LCCP), The Chartered Institution of Building Service Engineer (CIBSE)-Resilient Cities Special Interest Group, Arup, Atkins, and the Met Office.

The project will carry out measurements and thermal comfort surveys in six primary schools selected from dense urban areas in different parts of the UK to account for different climatic zones and socio-economic backgrounds. This will allow the development of empirical comfort models based on extensive field studies. Detailed laboratory data on exposures of children in climatic chambers will further investigate a wide range of parameters, which cannot be captured through surveys. Simulations will be carried out based on data from the schools to study how physical parameters and microclimate of the playground impact on children's thermal comfort. Design studies will be performed (based on data collected from surveys, laboratory and simulations) to propose solutions. The resilience of the solutions will be investigated using climate change weather data.

The models and guidelines of the project will be of benefit to a range of beneficiaries within and outside Higher Education including academics in the different disciplines, school communities, professionals in the related fields (e.g. engineers, architects, specialist consultants), professional association and standardisation bodies, planners and policy makers. Representatives from the different user groups will participate in the Stakeholders Advisory Board, along with the DfE, a key partner for the project.