Older adults may not be safe from heat waves, even inside their homes
08-04-2025

Older adults may not be safe from heat waves, even inside their homes

What if your own home became a health hazard every summer? As heat waves grow longer, hotter, and deadlier, aging individuals, especially those living alone, are finding it harder to stay safe inside homes that were never built for such extremes.

But what exactly is making their homes unsafe? In a recent study, conducted in the Basque Country, Spain, researchers examined how older adults who were living independently experienced heat waves. The team also identified the key factors that make houses unsafe in extreme heat.

How older people experience heat waves

Standard environmental tools that measure thermal comfort may not fully capture the complexities of how older people experience intense heat throughout the day.

Thus, there is a need for non-intrusive and context-sensitive methods to capture both the physical and emotional sides of heat discomfort in the older population.

The researchers, including study lead author Urtza Uriarte-Otazua, examined the impact of heat waves on independently living older individuals in two different types of housing environments.

Heat waves and housing features

The team combined on-site monitoring, interviews, and user surveys to understand how older individuals coped with the 2022 heat waves in two separate dwellings. One dwelling was in a typical urban setting and the other was in a small village in a peri-urban environment.

The researchers examined the impact of building features, such as accessibility, passive cooling capacity, and adaptability, on the resilience and vulnerability of the aging residents during extreme heat conditions.

The study highlighted that heat risks are complex, and tailored solutions are required to improve the thermal comfort and well-being of aging individuals.

Older adults at risk during heat waves

The results showed that living alone and staying in hot indoor spaces with elevated temperatures were some of the risk factors affecting the older population. In addition, age-related physiological decline, chronic health conditions, and social isolation reduce the ability of older people to cope with the extreme heat.

In the study area, a significant proportion of older people lived alone. Furthermore, they often lived in older houses that lacked proper thermal insulation, mechanical cooling systems and shading. 

The research team found that 30 percent of multi-story residential buildings in the Basque region have no elevators, meaning that older residents must walk up and down stairs to access their apartments. This particularly affected those living on upper floors, and also limited their access to cooler spaces.

Many urban and peri-urban homes built before 1980 do not meet modern energy efficiency standards. Even in modern buildings, like nZEBs (nearly zero-energy buildings), excessive airtightness or sunlight can lead to indoor overheating when passive cooling is not properly applied.

With increased frequency and prolonged heat waves, it is vital to make homes cool to safeguard the health of the aging residents.

Southern Europe faces heat wave threats

The situation in the Basque Country is not unique. Heat waves are becoming more intense, frequent, and prolonged in many other parts of the world, including Southern Europe and the Iberian Peninsula.

According to the IPCC‘s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) sixth assessment report, temperatures in Europe will continue to rise faster than the global average. Since the 1980s, the number of heat waves per decade has more than doubled in Spain.

Due to the UHI (Urban Heat Island) effect, extreme heat especially impacts urban areas. Heat stress poses serious health risks, particularly for aging individuals. With heat waves becoming a deadly threat, their recognition as a public health issue has never been more urgent.

Policy changes to safeguard older adults

The architectural gaps, when combined with social vulnerabilities, point to an urgent need for structural and policy-level interventions.

Although heat wave patterns, like frequency and intensity, are well studied, researchers have paid less attention to how the features of houses and buildings affect heat risk for older people in their daily lives.

Targeted, heat-resilient housing strategies need to prioritize the aging population. Houses built before the 1980s need to be upgraded with passive cooling features such as night ventilation, cross-ventilation, and external shading systems.

Future support for vulnerable adults

The government could provide financial support to install elevators in multi-storey buildings where older people live without mobility alternatives. Municipal authorities could establish programs that offer transport and access to local cooling centers during heat waves.

Housing assessments should also include social and emotional indicators, like validated loneliness scales. These steps may improve both heat safety and social support for vulnerable adults, thus potentially enhancing their physical and mental well-being.

With the right approach, it is possible to turn houses into true homes – places of safety and comfort for older adults – even during extreme heat. This is the vision for an inclusive and resilient future.

The full study was published in the journal Buildings.

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