Start date: 01.12.2018
Duration: 27 months
Coordinator: TECNALIA
Budget: 1 M€
Details
Homes4Life is a Coordination and Support Action (CSA) which has developed a new European certification scheme for age-friendly living environments. It has started in December 2018 and run until February 2021 (with an extension post-COVID of 3 months).
Our living environments have a tremendous impact on our health and wellbeing. Ensuring their suitability and adaptability to people’s needs and preferences – including when these needs and preferences evolve over time – is one of the most effective approaches to respond to challenges brought to us by Europe’s ageing demographics.
However, a huge share of the building stock is not adapted to permit to older persons to age in place. Even today’s new constructions are often not prepared to support health and wellbeing over the life course. As a matter of fact, one in eight of Europeans over 65 declare that their house is not comfortably warm during winter. Demand for age-friendly homes exceeds supply by far: a European study estimates to 10 million the demand for age-friendly homes in the upcoming years across the continent.
Homes4Life has addressed this challenge by contributing to the development of a new European certification scheme, based on an inspirational and realistic long-term vision of people’s needs and requirements in a holistic life-course approach and help develop better living environments integrating construction and digital solutions where this is beneficial.
The consortium grasped expertise from:
- Four research centers and universities: TECNALIA (Spain), TNO (Netherlands), Utrecht University (Netherlands), Universita Politecnica Delle Marche (Italy)
- A certification body: Certivéa (France) and its subsidiary Cerway, operator of the HQE certification in Europe
- An SME focused on innovation and technology transfer: R2M Solution (France)
- Three European associations representative of key stakeholders (Belgium): ECTP – the European Construction, built environment and energy efficient buildings Technology Platform, AGE Platform Europe – the voice of older persons in Europe, EUROCARERS – the European Association working for informal carers.
List of achievements
The project public deliverables are available here.
The H4L certification scheme has been tested on 11 pilot buildings across Europe, both in Design and Operational phase (more information here). The next step is the creation of a new structure to ensure the proper exploitation and update of the H4L Certification.
H4L Main outputs are:
* Homes4Life Certification Scheme
* Certification scheme promotional package
* Exploitation and supporting investment strategy
* Memorandum of understanding / commitment to invest in H4L-certified age-friendly homes
* Vison document
Contact
Contact person: Silvia Urra Uriarte
Address: TECNALIA
Tel:
email: silvia.urra@tecnalia.com
Status
Finished