Past Conferences
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CATE 2019 – Comfort at the Extremes: Energy, Economy and Climate
Heriot Watt University, Dubai, 10th – 11th April 2019
How do we adapt our Buildings, Cities and Shelters to keep us not only comfortable, but also thermally safe and healthy in a Warming World?
Check out the CATE 19 programme, workshop programme, Book of Abstracts, Proceedings and Legacy Document
See the photos from the conference.
In the face of an ever more extreme climate the world is calling urgently for answers to questions of how people can stay not only comfortable, but also thermally safe and healthy in a warming world. Current and future temperature trends and events threaten not only buildings, settlements and cities but also the temporary settlements built to cope them such as transient populations.
For the first time ever, we are gathering leading international figures from many fields to discuss crucial questions and ways forward on how to best provide Comfort at the Extremes in the complex political and economic environments we occupy.
Building on our premier global networks on multi-disciplinary Comfort research (see: www.windsorconference.com and www.nceub.org ) we are reaching out to researchers, governments, organisations and industries affected by extreme temperatures, both hot and cold, to look in detail at the nature and scale of the challenge, possible solutions and future opportunities. We will also explore the means to hand to build the more resilient buildings, operations and infra-structures we need to be able to withstand growing extremes. The greatest architectural challenge of our age is to design for an evolving ‘New Comfort Normal’ for buildings and cities as the world warms and ensure that people can occupy it.
Where better to explore the subject than in one of the hottest regions in the world, The Gulf, where the impacts of global warming can prove challenging on a daily basis? Hosted by Heriot Watt University working with a great team of researchers from across the Middle East and beyond, CATE 19 will be a landmark conference dealing with design issues in both high and low temperatures. Please Join us to start and develop a globally important conversation on the ‘comfort at the extremes’.
A number of the papers presented at CATE 19 are now available in the book based on the conference on: The Routledge on Resilient Comfort available from: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Resilient-Thermal-Comfort/Nicol-Rijal-Roaf/p/book/9781032155975
CATE 2021 – Oman
The 2021 Comfort At The Extremes Conference (www.cate21.com) was held from the 24th to the 26th October 2021 at the College of Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman, following on from CATE19 in Dubai. The hosts of this conference in Oman stressed the urgent need, and importance of, research into how best to adapt to the impacts of changing climates, energy systems and societal pressures on the sustainability and resilience of built environments, ecosystems, countries and the planet, not least in the very hot climate of the Middle East.
The conference reached out to all relevant researchers, governmental bodies, industries with vested interests in the future nature, scale andimpacts of extreme temperature trends and events. Problems were outlined and possible solutions and opportunities to build safer, healthier and better societies and economies were presented. A clear focus was on looking to integrate the work of many different disciplines and promote research collaboration between researchers and industry.
A range of papers described the past present and futures projects in Oman itself, a country located on the south-eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, with a hot and dry climate in the inland arid, hot desert region, bordered to the East by humid coastal areas. Papers covered a range of subjects including:
- Thermal comfort and vernacular architecture
- Comfort after COVID-19
- Sustainability in extreme climate
- Climate change and building design
- Natural ventilation and its role in thermal comfort
- Construction materials in extreme climates
- Outdoor thermal comfort
- Climate change and building design
- Policies and regulations of construction in extreme climates
- Smart building systems
- Resilient thermal comfort
The full proceedings are available on the conference website along with some of the presentations at: www.cate21.com
Windsor Conferences
Papers from previous conference are available in downloadable pdf form on the Windsor Conference site
