Community Resilience Centres for Improving Climate Adaptation to Bushfire Smoke and Heatwaves (ClimateRes)

Bushfire smoke and heatwaves increasingly threaten population health, especially among vulnerable groups such as the elderly, children, pregnant women, people with disabilities or comorbidities, and low-income households. These risks are projected to intensify with climate change, particularly in urban areas affected by heat islands, poor housing, and socioeconomic disadvantage. Community resilience centres—cool, clean-air spaces in public buildings—offer a promising yet under-evaluated intervention. This interdisciplinary, community co-designed project will assess their effectiveness in reducing exposure to heat and smoke, potential health benefits and costs, and associated implementation challenges. The project focuses on fast-growing, high-risk suburbs in Western Sydney and Canberra to inform scalable, evidence-based public health strategies.