Experienced temperature and Health

Harry Kennard, UCL Energy Institute

Heating and hot water demand account for around 40% of total UK energy demand. Cutting emissions from heating is essential if the UK is to meet its legal obligations. However, concern about the rate of excess winter deaths (the ratio of winter to summer mortality) has lead to questions surrounding what the minimum internal healthy temperature for homes should be and what the exact mechanism are which underlie the health impacts of cold homes.

This study makes use of UK Biobank data (a large longitudinal health study), in particular temperature data taken from an activity wristband worn by 100K Biobank participants for a week. Pilot studies showed that the temperature recorded by the wristband is a mixture of ambient environmental temperature and heat from the wrist – a quantity which has been called ‘experienced temperature’. Following a large data processing exercise to down-sample the 100k data files to produce experienced temperature time series, associations between demographic/health status data and the experienced temperature will be tested. It is hoped that these any revealed relationships will form the basis of future studies into the health impacts of cold homes.