Living Well – Apartments, Comfort and Resilience in Climate Change

Everyone should be able to live in a home that is safe and comfortable. Increasing weather extremes create a particular challenge for existing Melbourne apartments, especially where residents do not have access to cooling or where energy infrastructure fails during a heatwave.

The project analysed six apartment buildings and modelled their performance under conditions from Victoria's 2009 heatwave, when daytime temperatures exceeded 43°C across three days and overnight temperatures remained high.

None of the sample apartments met the international comfort standards used in the study. Further modelling found that standard retrofit measures could bring even the worst-performing building into compliance with two of the four standards assessed.

Recommendations

The work recommends considering the tested retrofits for existing apartments, using international best practice when regulating summer comfort in new apartments, and ensuring residents have a heatwave action plan until upgrades can be completed.

Researchers: Christopher Jensen, Adrian Chu, Xavier Cadorel and Dr Dominique Hes
Timeframe: 2016–2017