Michael Davies

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• Professor at University College London

Humans spend a large proportion of their time at home, where exposure to poor indoor air quality has detrimental – and often inequitably distributed – impacts on health and wellbeing. Unprecedented changes to residential indoor environments are expected in the coming decades, especially in order to meet net zero energy and greenhouse gas emissions...

The shortage of social housing is a crucial element of the UK housing crisis. In England, social rented housing provision significantly relies on market homes construction, with detrimental impacts on residents and the environment. Moratoria are often cited in the degrowth literature as policy tools supporting strategies to break free from growth-d...

The shortage of social housing is a crucial element of the UK housing crisis. In England, social rented housing provision significantly relies on market homes construction, with detrimental impacts on residents and the environment. Moratoria are often cited in the degrowth literature as policy tools supporting strategies to break free from growth-d...

Poor solid waste management in Kisumu, Kenya, contributes to adverse health, social, and environmental outcomes as a result of open burning, illegal dumping, and reliance on landfills. Taking Kisumu as a case study, we use behavioural systems mapping (BSM) for the purpose of understanding the role of behaviour in this complex problem. We qualitativ...

This paper announces a new initiative - the research project Policy and Implementation for Climate & Health Equity (PAICE), which aims to investigate the complex systemic connections between climate change action, health and health equity, for translation of evidence into policy and practice in the UK. Using transdisciplinary approaches, PAICE will...

Archetype-based housing stock models of summer indoor temperature can support the development of policies to manage the climate change-driven increase in cooling demand and heat-related health impacts. Calibration can reduce the performance gap of such models, however, work on this topic is limited. Motivated by the growing importance of this under...

As people in the UK spend 95% of their time indoors, buildings are an important modifier of exposure to both non-optimal temperatures and air pollution. High ambient temperature and high PM2.5 (particulate matter) concentrations often occur together in urban areas. Residential building types prone to overheating (e.g. purpose-built flats) are often...

Mental disorders are a growing problem worldwide, putting pressure on healthcare systems and wider society. Anxiety and depression are estimated to cost the global economy US$1 trillion per year, yet only 2% of global median government healthcare expenditure goes towards mental health. There is growing evidence linking housing, socio-economic statu...

Population exposure to high temperatures poses health risks and increases mortality. ‘Cool roofs’ (high-albedo roofs) and rooftop photovoltaics (RPV) may reduce temperatures in urban areas. Here, using advanced urban climate modeling, we model impacts of these measures on air temperature and heat-related mortality in London during the record-breaki...

Executive summary Despite the initial hope inspired by the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world is now dangerously close to breaching its target of limiting global multiyear mean heating to 1·5°C. Annual mean surface temperature reached a record high of 1·45°C above the pre-industrial baseline in 2023, and new temperature highs were recorded throughout...

Plain Language Summary Multiple common city scale passive and active interventions exist to reduce urban population's exposure to extreme heat during hot spells. Nonetheless, a proper comparison of the effect that each of these interventions may have on the temperatures experienced within large cities is missing. Additionally, the radiative and the...

The shortage of social housing is a crucial element of the UK housing crisis. In England, social housing provision significantly relies on market homes construction, with detrimental impacts on residents and the environment. Moratoria are often cited in the degrowth literature as policy tools to break free from growth-driven mechanisms and achieve...

The provision of good quality social housing is crucial to address disparities in cities. However, the supply of social homes in London is threatened by numerous political, economic, environmental, and social pressures. Interacting, these pressures generate a complexity hard to navigate, leading to interventions that reinforce rather than alleviate...

Urban natural spaces provide important ecosystem services and a wide range of health- and well-being-related benefits for their visitors. They are also essential spaces for biodiversity protection and promotion in a world of rising urbanisation rates and worsening impacts of climate change. However, these spaces are often underutilised by urban res...

Cities are complex systems characterised by interdependencies among infrastructural, economic, social, ecological, and human elements. Urban surface water flooding poses a significant challenge due to climate change, population growth, and ageing infrastructure, often resulting in substantial economic losses and social disruption. Traditional hydro...

Comprehensive studies comparing impacts of building and street levels interventions on air temperature at metropolitan scales are still lacking despite increased urban heat-related mortality and morbidity. We therefore model the impact of 9 interventions on air temperatures at 2 m during 2 hot days from the summer 2018 in the Greater London Authori...

Monitoring indoor pollutant concentrations is integral in the efforts to improve indoor air quality in UK homes. The impact that the number and placement of monitors can have on the quantified pollutant exposure is an under-researched, yet potentially important consideration. To address this research gap, this work employed an EnergyPlus-CONTAM co-...

This document is a supplementary material to paper 'Sustaining Attention to Sustainability, Health, and Well-Being in Urban Regeneration'.

Impacts of housing on health are well-recognised. Despite this, housing standards have been neglected and there are gaps in healthy housing policies, particularly in low and middle-income countries. Given the recent publication of the WHO Housing and health guidelines, and the need to implement these into policy at all scales, we carried out a focu...

In urban regeneration projects, balancing environmental, social, and economic aspects is crucial but challenging, often leading to mission drift when team focus deviates from the original goals. Through a case study of regeneration projects at a large U.K. housing association, we explore decision makers’ attention to sustainability, health, and wel...

Decision-makers are increasingly asked to act differently in how they respond to complex urban challenges, recognising the value in bringing together and integrating cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral knowledge to generate effective solutions. Participatory modelling allows to bring stakeholders together, enhance knowledge and understanding of a sy...

Several modeling tools commonly used for supporting flood risk assessment and management are highly effective in representing physical phenomena, but provide a rather limited understanding of the multiple implications that flood risk and flood risk reduction measures have on highly complex systems such as urban areas. In fact, most of the available...

Executive Summary The Lancet Countdown is an international research collaboration that independently monitors the evolving impacts of climate change on health, and the emerging health opportunities of climate action. In its eighth iteration, this 2023 report draws on the expertise of 114 scientists and health practitioners from 52 research institut...

Radon, a known carcinogen, is one of the most commonly monitored indoor contaminants. This paper utilises findings from a previous study on indoor radon measurements in United Kingdom (UK) homes to explore the UK Government’s Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) assumptions for air infiltration rates. These assumptions are important as they are used...

We evaluate current and future summertime temperature and indoor air quality (IAQ) in two London care homes, occupied by seniors. We further examine the effect of natural ventilation, aiming to identify strategies that can maintain temperature, CO 2 and key pollutants (PM 2.5 , NO 2 ) within acceptable ranges. Data come from simulations in DesignBu...

Covid-19 has caused great challenges to the energy sector, particularly in residential buildings with low-income households. This study investigates the impact of the confinement measures due to the Covid-19 outbreak on the energy demand of seven residential archetype buildings in Greater London. Three levels of confinement for occupant schedules a...

According to WHO (World Health Organization), in 2020, 14% of people in global urban areas relied on polluting solid fuels and technologies, compared with 52% of the rural population. The health impacts of such inequality are massive. It was estimated that 3.2 million premature deaths per year (2020), particularly in low-income and middle-income co...

Housing is an important modifier of outdoor environmental hazards due to features such as the amount of passive and active ventilation a dwelling receives, the proportion of the façade that is glazed and the building’s thermal insulation levels. Using Artificial Neural Networks based on an indoor building physics model, we simulate indoor temperatu...

Comprehensive studies comparing impacts of building and street levels interventions on air temperature at metropolitan scales are still lacking despite increased urban heat-related mortality and morbidity. We therefore model the impact of 9 interventions on air temperatures at 2 m during 2 hot days from the summer 2018 in the Greater London Authori...

Background: Polluting fuels and inefficient stove technologies are still a leading cause of premature deaths worldwide, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries. Previous studies of global household air pollution (HAP) have neither considered the estimation of PM2·5 at national level nor the corresponding attributable mortality burde...

Green roofs can mitigate heat, increase biodiversity, and attenuate storm water, giving some of the benefits of natural vegetation in an urban context where ground space is scarce. To guide the design of more sustainable and climate-resilient buildings and neighbourhoods, there is a need to assess the existing status of green roof coverage and expl...

Anthropogenic climate change will have a detrimental impact on global health, including the direct impact of higher ambient temperatures. Existing projections of heat-related health outcomes in a changing climate often consider increasing ambient temperatures alone. Population growth and structure has been identified as a key source of uncertainty...

Heat pumps (HPs) are seen as an increasingly important technology able to contribute significantly towards the decarbonisation of the domestic stock in the UK. However, there appears to be a performance gap between predicted and real-life HP performance, with several studies highlighting the need to include the HP’s interaction with users when exam...

Anthropogenic climate change is projected to increase ambient temperatures, and the frequency, intensity and duration of extreme heat events worldwide. As a result, recent years have seen an increasing policy and research focus on the potential adverse effects of warm and hot weather on human thermal comfort, wellbeing, morbidity and mortality. Cer...

This chapter provides an overview of factors affecting heat-related morbidity and mortality in the Greater London Area. Evidence from past heatwave periods indicates that London’s Urban Heat Island effect contributes substantially to heat-related mortality rates. During a warm period in 2006, the proportion of heat deaths attributable to this effec...

The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown is published as the world confronts profound and concurrent systemic shocks. Countries and health systems continue to contend with the health, social, and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, while Russia's invasion of Ukraine and a persistent fossil fuel overdependence has pushed the world into global...

Scientific modelling is a prime means to generate understanding and provide much-needed information to support public decision-making in the fluid area of sustainability. A growing, diverse sustainability modelling literature, however, does not readily lend itself to standard validation procedures, which are typically rooted in the positivist princ...

Green roofs are roofs incorporating a deliberate layer of growing substrate and vegetation. They can reduce both indoor and outdoor temperatures, so are often presented as a strategy to reduce urban overheating, which is expected to increase due to climate change and urban growth. In addition, they could help decrease the cooling energy demand of b...

Giorgos Petrou and colleagues argue for systematic large scale monitoring of indoor air to avoid unintended harms to health from home energy efficiency programmes

Incorporating consideration of causal mechanisms of complex policy issues and goals is critical for policy design, but tools to support exploration of the interconnections, trade-offs and unintended consequences of a focused policy issue are limited. Understanding how to undertake systems-based policy design is crucial for designing effective polic...

This paper describes a global research programme on the complex systemic connections between urban development and health. Through transdisciplinary methods the Complex Urban Systems for Sustainability and Health (CUSSH) project will develop critical evidence on how to achieve the far-reaching transformation of cities needed to address vital enviro...

Global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from buildings while also improving their environmental resilience have intensified. These efforts are often supported by building stock models which can inform policymakers on the impact of policies on energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and the indoor environment. The input values of such...

The UK has introduced ambitious legislation for reaching net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. Improving the energy efficiency of homes is a key priority in achieving this target and solutions include minimising unwanted heat losses and decarbonising heating and cooling. Making a dwelling more airtight and applying insulation can result...

In this work we evaluate the potential of selected environmental strategies in reducing air pollution and summertime indoor overheating. Associated changes in mortality rates are also calculated for older adults in London. Reducing these risks for vulnerable groups is an immediate priority and given that seniors spend most of their time indoors, ou...

The ambition to develop sustainable and healthy cities requires city-specific policy and practice founded on a multidisciplinary evidence base, including projections of human-induced climate change. A cascade of climate models of increasing complexity and resolution is reviewed, which provides the basis for constructing climate projections-from glo...

In 2020, Covid-19-related mobility restrictions resulted in the most extensive human-made air-quality changes ever recorded. The changes in mobility are quantified in terms of outdoor air pollution (concentrations of PM2.5 and NO2) and the associated health impacts in four UK cities (Greater London, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast). After applying a...

Surging amounts of waste are reported globally and especially in lower income countries, with negative consequences for health and the environment. Increasing concern has been raised for the limited progress achieved in practice by diverse sets of policies and programmes. Waste management is a wicked problem characterized by multilayered interdepen...

Building modelling is a valuable tool in the widespread efforts to decarbonise the built environment. To ensure modelling robustness, uncertainty and sensitivity analysis techniques are often used. Such techniques commonly require model input distributions to be defined. This paper describes a novel approach, within the built environment, for ident...

The warming climate causes adverse effects on thermal comfort and health, especially for vulnerable older adults. This study assesses the current and future risk of summertime overheating in London’s care homes and explores the potential of passive ventilation on reducing these risks. Analysis is based on temperature monitoring of two care settings...

With more than half the world’s population living in cities, understanding how the built environment impacts human health at different urban scales is crucial. To be able to shape cities for health, an understanding is needed of planetary health impacts, which encompass the human health impacts of human-caused disruptions on the Earth’s natural eco...

Contemporary challenges linked to public health and climate change demand more effective decision-making and urban planning practices, in particular by taking greater account of evidence. In order to do this, trust-building relationships between scientists and urban practitioners through collaborative research programmes is required. Based on a pol...

Summertime overheating in care settings has been identified as a key risk and research priority for the health and social care system. This paper examines the current and future risk of summertime overheating in two London-based care homes occupying modern and older buildings. Continuous monitoring of outdoor and indoor temperature in bedrooms, com...

Background: Environmental improvement is a priority for urban sustainability and health and achieving it requires transformative change in cities. An approach to achieving such change is to bring together researchers, decision-makers, and public groups in the creation of research and use of scientific evidence. Methods: This article describes the d...

Sustainable development is best supported by intersectoral policies informed by a range of evidence and knowledge types (e.g. scientific and lay). Given China’s rapid urbanisation, scale and global importance in climate mitigation, this study investigates how evidence is perceived and used to inform urban health and sustainability policies at centr...

The expanding research of complexity economics has been signalling its preference for a formal quantitative investigation of diverse interactions between heterogeneous agents at the lower, micro-level resulting in emergent, realistic socioeconomic dynamics at the higher, macro-level. However, there is scarcity in research that explicitly links comp...

Climate change means the UK will experience warmer winters and hotter summers in the future. Concurrent energy efficiency improvements to housing may modify indoor exposures to heat or cold, while population aging may increase susceptibility to temperature-related mortality. We estimate heat and cold mortality and energy consumption in London for t...

The indoor air quality (IAQ) of five low-energy London apartments has been assessed through the measurement of 16 key pollutants, using continuous and diffusive methods across heating and non-heating seasons. This case study approach aimed to assess the presence of pollutants within low-energy apartments and to better understand the role of ventila...

Background: A growing number of cities, including Greater London, have set ambitious targets, including detailed policies and implementation plans, to reach global goals on sustainability, health, and climate change. Here we present a tool for a rapid assessment of the magnitude of impact of specific policy initiatives to reach these targets. The d...

Deprived communities in many cities are exposed to higher levels of outdoor air pollution, and there is increasing evidence of similar disparities for indoor air pollution exposure. There is a need to understand the drivers for this exposure disparity in order to develop effective interventions aimed at improving population health and reducing heal...

The Complex Urban Systems for Sustainability and Health (CUSSH) project is a global research programme on the complex systemic connections between urban development and health. Through transdisciplinary methods it will develop critical evidence on how to achieve the far-reaching transformation of cities needed to address vital environmental imperat...

This paper brings together objective and subjective data on indoor temperature and thermal comfort to examine the magnitude and perception of summertime overheating in two London-based care homes occupying modern and older buildings. Continuous monitoring of indoor and outdoor temperature, relative humidity and CO 2 levels was conducted in summer 2...

Energy use in buildings accounts for one-third of the overall global energy consumption and total building floor area continues to increase each year as new developments are constructed and delivered. If stringent climate goals are to be met, these buildings will need to consume less energy and emit less carbon. However, design intentions for energ...

To manage the concerns regarding the energy performance gap in buildings, a structured and longitudinal performance assessment of buildings, covering design through to operation, is necessary. Modelling can form an integral part of this process by ensuring that a good practice design stage modelling is followed by an ongoing evaluation of operation...

The UK has introduced legislation that requires net-zero greenhouse gas emissions to be achieved by 2050. Improving the energy efficiency of homes is a key objective to help reach this target, and the UK government’s Clean Growth Strategy aims to get many homes up to an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) Band of C by 2035. The relationship betwee...

The problem of solid waste management presents an issue of increasing importance in many low-income set- tings, including the progressively urbanised context of Kenya. Kisumu County is one such setting with an esti- mated 500 t of waste generated per day and with less than half of it regularly collected. The open burning and natural decay of solid...

Cities produce more than 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Action by cities is therefore crucial for climate change mitigation as well as for safeguarding the health and wellbeing of their populations under climate change. Many city governments have made ambitious commitments to climate change mitigation and adaptation and implemented a range...

Home Browse Climate action for health and wellbeing in cities: a protocol for... ALL METRICS 99 VIEWS 11 DOWNLOADS Get PDF Get XML Cite Export Track Email Share ▬ STUDY PROTOCOL Climate action for health and wellbeing in cities: a protocol for the systematic development of a database of peer-reviewed studies using machine learning methods [version...

The COVID-19 pandemic has required health protection responses with far-reaching consequences for society, livelihoods, and the wider economy. Future enquiries will in time evaluate the success of responses at all scales. But emerging lessons highlight immediate implications for addressing the growing climate crisis through a recovery from COVID-19...

We explore methodological issues core to the cost-benefit evaluation of building adaptations designed to protect against heat risks to residents of care homes in England in the context of the uncertainties relating to the loss of life expectancy in heat death. We used building physics modelling to quantify the impact of external window shading on i...

Background: Environmental improvement is a priority for urban sustainability and health and achieving it requires transformative change in cities. An approach to achieving such change is to bring together researchers, decision-makers, and public groups in the creation of research and use of scientific evidence. Methods: This article describes the d...

Background: Environmental improvement is a priority for urban sustainability and health and achieving it requires transformative change in cities. An approach to achieving such change is to bring together researchers, decision-makers, and public groups in the creation of research and use of scientific evidence. / Methods: This article describes the...

In sub-Saharan Africa, most transmission of mosquito-transmitted diseases, such as malaria or dengue, occurs within or around houses. Preventing mosquito house entry and reducing mosquito production around the home would help reduce the transmission of these diseases. Based on recent research, we make key recommendations for reducing the threat of...