Past Conferences
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CATE 2023 – CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India, 13th -15th December 2023
Climate change affects various geographical, social, cultural, economic, and climatic contexts
differently. Additionally, its impacts are visible at extreme physical scales ranging from an individual
human body and its physiology to the urban level. Therefore, we need diverse solutions for diverse
scales and contexts. The plethora of probable solutions must also be interdisciplinary to demonstrate
effectiveness in multiple domains that affect each other.
Building on the success of the international ‘Windsor Conferences on Thermal Comfort (1994-2020)’
and the ‘Comfort at the Extremes Conferences’ in Dubai (2019), Oman (2021), and Edinburgh (2022),
CATE 2023 brought diverse groups together to deliberate interdisciplinary solutions and strategies
oriented toward climate change and associated extreme events at several scales. This prestigious
conference, hosted by the Faculty of Technology, CEPT University, and the Centre for Advanced
Research in Building Science and Energy, CEPT Research and Development Foundation, took place
from December 13th to 15th, 2023, at CEPT University.
The conference featured thirteen keynote addresses, four workshops, a dedicated exhibition floor for
universities to showcase teaching methodologies, curricula, and student work aligned with the
conference theme, and fifty-five paper presentations. Over 350 people from academia and industry
participated in the conference. The workshops focused on topics such as the process of designing
resilient and highly energy-efficient buildings; alternative avenues of coping with climate challenges
concerning modification of the built environment and human active and passive measures; and
challenges and opportunities for the application of Urban Building Energy Models in cities in the
global South.
Paper presentations covered the following thematic areas:- Circular Economy, Building Materials And Methods
- Climate Resilience – Buildings And Communities
- Human Physiology And Adaptation
- Design Intervention In Buildings For Thermal Comfort
- Health And Well-Being In Buildings
- Low-Energy Cooling Technologies
- Nature-Based Solutions
- Thermal Comfort Models, Metrics And Resilience
- Urban Heat Island And Outdoor Comfort
The Book of Proceedings of CATE 2023 has been published by CEPT Press; each paper has been
assigned a unique DOI. Individual papers and the entire proceedings can be accessed here.Click here to have a glimpse of CATE 2023!
3rd International Conference on COMFORT AT THE EXTREMES: COVID, Climate Change and Ventilation
5th -6th September 2022, Edinburgh
As the world began to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and was coming to grips with the continuous rise in record breaking temperatures around the world this conference attracted some 130 people from 24 countries to look at how these events might impact on the design of buildings.
Starting with a welcome party at the spectacular Edinburgh Castle it was held over two days in the historic venue of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh, originally designed by Robert Adams in the 1770s. The multi-disciplinary brought together speakers from the medical and building professions, engineers, architects, physical and social scientists, politicians and decisions makers. Some important shared research showed how natural ventilation was effective in purging viral loads from hospital warms and clinics and pointed to the need to ensure that opening windows were employed not only in hospitals but also in any buildings in which groups worked together and were subjected to high risks from pathogen transmission.
A further strong signal from the conference was that new ways of looking at comfort were coming to the fore, including the use of personal comfort technologies and also of local radiant heating and cooling systems. In addition to standout plenary sessions there were ten workshops:
CATE 22 WORKSHOPS:
COVID-19 in Buildings: Lessons and Impacts
Extreme Weather Design
Natural Ventilation: New Thinking
Thermal Comfort: New Directions
Physiology at the extremes
Resilient Cities and Communities
Energy and Emissions: Drivers and Impacts
Behaviours and Controls
Building Case Studies: Offices, Homes, Care Homes, Schools
Drivers and Barriers for Change: Regulations and StandardsA number of the papers are included in the resulting Routledge Handbook on Resilient Comfort
The Proceedings are open access and available here
Along with some brilliant keynote online presentations on:
AIR FILTRATION ON HOSPITAL WARDS AND COVID;
DESIGNING AIR FLOWS TO MINIMISE COVID TRANSMISSION;
COMFORT AND VENTILATION IN HOSPITALS;
REDUCING COVID DEATHS IN WARDS WITH A WINDOW OPENING REGIME;
URBAN STRATEGIES FOR EXTREME HEATWAVES;
MODELLING THE IMPACT OF TREES ON COOLING LOADS IN BUILDINGS;
THE COOLING CRUNCH – USE FANS BEFORE HVAC – A HOW TO;
STANDARDS – WHOSE STANDARDS?;
HUMANS AND BUILDINGS IN TIMES OF CLIMATE CHANGE;
ITS HOTTING UP: HOW MUCH AND HOW FAST?
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
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
Windsor Conferences
Papers from previous conference are available in downloadable pdf form on the Windsor Conference site
