This seminar series aims to generate understanding of the contribution of human behaviour regarding cold homes, fuel poverty and their impact on health by reviewing current evidence, identify evidence gaps and priorities for future research. It will explicitly consider the influence of social and health inequalities, maintain a focus on policy influences, impact and interventions. It aims to add to existing academic knowledge and forge new inter-disciplinary discussions and collaborations. Research is required to generate understanding of the human responses and experience that may place people at risk of fuel poverty, and influence their decision making regarding home heating in terms of heating behaviour, as well as in seeking help and knowledge. It is essential that this inquiry seeks to explain how inequality and wider structural determinents influence human behaviour regarding cold homes and fuel poverty, as well as the more subtle influences of culture, social norms, beliefs, attitudes and values. This ESRC seminar series builds on two previous events, an Evidence Summit on health, fuel poverty and cold homes was held by the UK Health Forum, Friends of the Earth and Energy Bill Revolution ( UK Health Forum 2013) and second an International roundtable discussion on health and wellbeing impacts of energy efficiency run by the International Energy Agency (IEA, 2013). The applicants of this ESRC application participated in both events and will build on them by taking a cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary approach and taking health and human behavioour as the focus. The seminars ensure cumulative rather than on-off debate and are unique in adopting an emphasis on policy development, intervention and implementation. We will review existing evidence incuding, economic evaluations, identify and adddress evidence gaps, and develop partnerships, questions and proposals for future policy implemetnation and research. The seminar programme is UK led, and will include contributions from across Europe and beyond through the WHO Global Network of Age Friendly Cities, Healthy Cities Network and the International Energy Agency. This will support collaborations for Horizon 2020. The seminar series brings together a unique partnership of academic, local and national government, charitable and voluntary sector partners. It will add to existing body of academic knowledge and help to forge new inter-disciplinary discussions, theoretical propositions and research collaborations. Interconnections will be explored between academic disciplines, cross government departments and organisations and cross sector. As the seminar series is focused upon the behaviour and vulnerability of high risk groups early dissemination and impact is vital and interim dissemination methods will be adopted via the project website and briefing papers. The seminars will adopt a lifecourse approach in the first year and look at vulnerability to cold across ages. Seminars in the second year will focus on specific vulnerable groups where little research has been conducted and there are existing social and health inequalities, these are Black and Minorty Ethnic (BME) groups, the rural poor and the socially isolatated. In the final year the focus will be on understanding the current policy enviroment, global and national influences regarding the implications for future evidence based policy. The seminars will be one day events targeted at 30 people. The morning will consist of presentations followed by structured round table discussions in the afternoon. The final event will be in the form of a mini-conference of up to 100 people to pull together learning from accross the seminar series, agree recommendations and outputs including publications and future research collaborations and projects. All contributers are coonfirmed unless stated.

This seminar series aims to generate understanding of the contribution of human behaviour regarding cold homes, fuel poverty and their impact on health by reviewing current evidence, identify evidence gaps and priorities for future research. It will explicitly consider the influence of social and health inequalities, maintain a focus on policy influences, impact and interventions. It aims to add to existing academic knowledge and forge new inter-disciplinary discussions and collaborations. Research is required to generate understanding of the human responses and experience that may place people at risk of fuel poverty, and influence their decision making regarding home heating in terms of heating behaviour, as well as in seeking help and knowledge. It is essential that this inquiry seeks to explain how inequality and wider structural determinents influence human behaviour regarding cold homes and fuel poverty, as well as the more subtle influences of culture, social norms, beliefs, attitudes and values. This ESRC seminar series builds on two previous events, an Evidence Summit on health, fuel poverty and cold homes was held by the UK Health Forum, Friends of the Earth and Energy Bill Revolution ( UK Health Forum 2013) and second an International roundtable discussion on health and wellbeing impacts of energy efficiency run by the International Energy Agency (IEA, 2013). The applicants of this ESRC application participated in both events and will build on them by taking a cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary approach and taking health and human behavioour as the focus. The seminars ensure cumulative rather than on-off debate and are unique in adopting an emphasis on policy development, intervention and implementation. We will review existing evidence incuding, economic evaluations, identify and adddress evidence gaps, and develop partnerships, questions and proposals for future policy implemetnation and research. The seminar programme is UK led, and will include contributions from across Europe and beyond through the WHO Global Network of Age Friendly Cities, Healthy Cities Network and the International Energy Agency. This will support collaborations for Horizon 2020. The seminar series brings together a unique partnership of academic, local and national government, charitable and voluntary sector partners. It will add to existing body of academic knowledge and help to forge new inter-disciplinary discussions, theoretical propositions and research collaborations. Interconnections will be explored between academic disciplines, cross government departments and organisations and cross sector. As the seminar series is focused upon the behaviour and vulnerability of high risk groups early dissemination and impact is vital and interim dissemination methods will be adopted via the project website and briefing papers. The seminars will adopt a lifecourse approach in the first year and look at vulnerability to cold across ages. Seminars in the second year will focus on specific vulnerable groups where little research has been conducted and there are existing social and health inequalities, these are Black and Minorty Ethnic (BME) groups, the rural poor and the socially isolatated. In the final year the focus will be on understanding the current policy enviroment, global and national influences regarding the implications for future evidence based policy. The seminars will be one day events targeted at 30 people. The morning will consist of presentations followed by structured round table discussions in the afternoon. The final event will be in the form of a mini-conference of up to 100 people to pull together learning from accross the seminar series, agree recommendations and outputs including publications and future research collaborations and projects. All contributers are coonfirmed unless stated.

Even if opening a window has a limited impact on the environmental conditions in an office, it is often a desirable feature as users are typically more tolerant as they feel they have been able to take action to improve their space. The ability of a user to interact with a façade does not, however, come without risk to the energy performance of a building. In a domestic setting, a householder is directly responsible for the energy bills and would therefore not consciously leave a window open overnight in the winter. In an office environment however, there is no financial driver for the user to operate the façade in the same energy efficient manner. Whilst there may be a strong driver to open a window in an office (stuffiness, high temperature), the driver to close the window (energy awareness) may be very weak unless there is an additional driver such as external noise, rain or a security risk. This poses a real challenge to the facilities manager, 'happy productive users' prefer control of the façade, which is what well designed non-domestic building environments should provide, but providing this control introduces significant energy performance risk. This study proposes to develop and test a low cost, non-invasive technique to assess the impact of poor facade control on energy performance and enable facilities managers to address this issue. We are looking to use external cameras to diagnose the status of a facade in terms of window opening, blind and internal lighting usage and to engage the Facilities Manager, security staff and building users to change the facade state. This approach can help address issues of (1) winter heating losses, (2) summer overheating and (3) poor internal lighting operation. Whilst security guards may provide an effective solution to the problem of energy waste, successful users' behavioural change in managing windows and blinds is very important in non-domestic buildings where there are no guards or where guards cannot intervene due to their narrow remit. All interventions will be developed through a user-centred design approach. Workshops will be conducted at the start of the project, to make sure that the interventions fit both with the technical constraints and with the organisational culture of the buildings where they will be deployed. In particular we will focus on (1) the trade-offs between preserving privacy and sharing information and (2) on the balance between group-level and individual feedback. As far as point (1) is concerned, a privacy-preserving intervention would allow us to send email messages to individuals who left their windows open, in the hope that this will not be done in the future. In contrast, broadcasting to everyone on a given floor in which windows are currently open and need closing would allow users to take action here and now. This second approach may be considered more constructive (rather than reprimand), it would require everyone to know which windows were left open, and by inference who might have left them so. Regarding point (2), our aim is to test whether the effect of individual feedback (e.g. individual emails saying "you left your window open last weekend") can be reinforced by framing it in the context of the general performance of people occupying the same building (e.g. through a public display or an email that is sent to everyone). Designing interfaces and systems which provide and maintain user engagement is the other key theme of this study. Decay in user engagement is a challenge for any behaviour change intervention and often not fully addressed in studies. Here we anticipate strong and sustained engagement with the facilities manager and security staff who are the primary path to energy savings in the building. Engagement with users of buildings such as offices is far more challenging where developed interfaces have to add value to the individual to ensure their sustained use beyond the initial 'novelty / honeymoon' period.