An ageing population raises the question of providing adequate housing that enables older people to age in place without losing autonomy and independence. Except for the issue of accessibility, no framework exists that specifically outlines a standard to achieve and, as a result, interventions on existing or on new buildings may be inconsistent without leading to a desired rise in living standards. This research addresses this issue by presenting a framework for the assessment of the age-appropriateness of housing through a number of metrics that detect and identify physical and non-physical features of a home environment to enable ageing in place. The study combines data from a qualitative systematic literature review of 93 papers and qualitative data from structured interviews with four experts in the field. As a result, 71 metrics were identified, divided into eight main domains, to describe the framework. This paper provides an improved understanding of the housing features that enable ageing in place. The tool categorizes and rates qualitative and quantitative aspects that contribute to the age-friendliness of housing, resulting in an easy to adopt assessment framework. This is a valuable means for stakeholders engaged in improving the current housing stock or in constructing new buildings for older people.

As cities become larger and more densely populated the impacts of major earthquake events on city communities become more severe. Improving community resilience to earthquake events relies on the complex relationships that exist between different community stakeholder groups (citizens, businesses, community groups, emergency services, critical infrastructure providers, politicians etc.). This paper reports results from a major EU funded study (LIQUEFACT) that developed a tool for assessing community resilience to Earthquake Induced Liquefaction Disaster (EILD) events. The tool is based on a customised version of the UNDRR Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities. The paper reviews alternative approaches to measuring community resilience and describes the process used in the LIQUEFACT project to develop and validate the customised scorecard. The paper presents the results of a questionnaire survey to identify the best generic approach to measure community resilience and a series of semi-structured group interviews to define a range of specific metrics for assessing community resilience to EILD events; and the results of a validation workshop to assess the effectiveness and usability of the customised scorecard. The paper concludes that it is possible to develop a customised version of the UNDRR Scorecard at an appropriate level of granularity to support improved community resilience to earthquake induced soil liquefaction disaster events. The paper also presents key lessons that could assist those developing similar customised versions of the UNDRR scorecard for use in different geographical settings or against different disaster scenarios.

This study aims to create a vision of the future hospital to help healthcare leaders understand how changes in society and the healthcare system, compounded by climate change, could affect future hospital estate. The study is part of a larger project based on participatory backcasting aimed at providing integrated strategies for transitioning to a zero-carbon future and adapting to existing climate change through improved asset management. The data presented in this paper were collected during a full-day workshop to construct the vision of the future hospital in 2050. A multidisciplinary team of 19 participants participated in the discussions. A six-phase thematic analysis was applied to the data to develop the narrative vision and graphic recording. The healthcare system is undergoing transformative changes due to evolving healthcare delivery, patient expectations, emerging technologies, climate change, and sustainability. However, current hospital strategies often fail to consider the interrelationship between the hospital estate and its socio-environmental context. Policymakers, healthcare system leaders, and hospital leaders need a clear vision of the hospital of the future to implement transformational strategies. Healthcare transformations require shifting from traditional centralised hospitals to a more flexible, distributed model. Healthcare leaders need to proactively assess how hospitals respond to current and future hazards and consider the impacts within the context of integrated and dispersed healthcare delivery. To address this, a systematic approach to modelling hazards and evaluating design or upgrading options is essential to mitigate the transfer of climate-related risks within healthcare systems.

Latest developments in stakeholder management literature focus on dynamic stakeholder engagement and disengagement practices, and how these are facilitated towards reaching systemic outcomes. However, limited evidence support that this network-level approach can positively influence project success. The paper analyses this issue by considering the practices (how and when), rationales (why) and outcomes (so what) that evolve in the dynamic management of external stakeholders in dementia-friendly environments. This is a crucial area to explore as the ageing population and rising dementia prevalence has increased the need to engage external stakeholders, such as people living with dementia, to develop dementia-friendly health and social environments. The empirical study of the 2013/2014 Department of Health National Dementia Capital Investment Programme involved a statistical and qualitative analysis of 98 pilot projects’ final lessons learnt reports. The analysis advances the dynamic process of timely engaging and disengaging external stakeholders in a context not previously explored in the literature related to dementia-friendly environments. Eight recurring practices and six rationales, the latter characterized by their temporal dimension, are presented in a processual model of stakeholder management.

LIQUEFACT was a EU H2020 funded project to investigate earthquake induced liquefaction potential across Europe and develop a series of tools to understand better the impacts that earthquake induced liquefaction disaster events have on the resilience of built assets and communities. A resilience assessment and improvement framework was developed to provide the theoretical underpinning for the LIQUEFACT project and to provide practical guidance on the assessment of built assets to Earthquake Induced Liquefaction Disaster events through the LIQUEFACT software tool and built asset management planning framework. This paper outlines the theoretical basis to the resilience assessment and improvement framework and built asset management planning framework and presents the results from a validation exercise through their application to a hypothetical healthcare scenario. The paper also describes the different stages of the research that led to the definition of the resilience assessment and improvement framework and built asset management planning framework. To this end the paper concludes that the resilience assessment and improvement framework and built asset management framework provide a longitudinal, holistic view of disaster vulnerability and resilience that can inform the selection of ground improvement mitigation actions to improve business continuity and resilience planning.