Homes4Life at the ITE+3R congress in Leon, Spain

Homes4Life coordinator TECNALIA – Silvia Urra Uriarte – presented the project at the ITE+3R congress, an event focused on buildings and urban refurbishment and sustainability, held in March 2019 in Leon, Spain.

Homes4Life coordinator – Silvia Urra Uriarte – at the ITE+3R Spanish Congress

Homes4Life was presented within the Round Table 1: The human profile in the retrofitting and urban regeneration interventions. The video (in Spanish) of the roundtable can be watched here.

AIOTI publication on IoT for Smart Living Environments

Homes4Life partner Utrecht University – Dr. Alexander Peine – co-authored and contributed to the latest AIOTI WG05 (Smart Living Environments for Ageing Well) publication focused on Recommendations for healthy ageing solutions.

This recommendation paper entitled “IoT for Smart Living Environments” is built around these 2 strategic objectives, addressing the 3 following challenges, each of them discussed in the 3 main chapters of this report:

  • Building a sustainable ecosystem for SLE for Ageing Well, around the technological and stakeholders requirements
  • Driving Acceptance through market structuration, in increasing the acceptance of innovative IoT-based solutions for smart living environments for ageing well while impelling user needs and expanding the innovation coverage in the ageing well domain
  • Demonstrating the IoT impact in ageing well, through architectures responding to stakeholders expectations, including proper security and privacy, implemented through different use cases.

Homes4Life is featured in the full report which can be read here

About AIOTI, the Alliance for Internet of Things Innovation : https://aioti.eu 

Homes4Life presented at EIP AHA D4 – Age Friendly Environments meeting

The Homes4Life coordinator TECNALIA – Silvia Urra Uriarte – and our partner Utrecht University – Frans Sengers – presented Homes4Life at a meeting of the D4 Action Group on Innovation for age-friendly buildings of the EIP AHA (European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing) .

The meeting was focused on the recent developments in the field of active and healthy ageing and more specifically on age-friendly environments. The event offered an opportunity to discuss age-friendly environments policies and experiences in Poland, European age-friendly housing certification, smart healthy age-friendly environments, and the future of EIP AHA beyond 2020.

Silvia Urra – TECNALIA – presenting Homes4Life
Frans Sengers – Utrecht University – giving a focus on the Homes4Life context and vision

Homes4Life was presented in the 2nd day session focused on Smart Living and Housing. Several questions emerged from the presentation and were discussed with the audience, in particular on ideas about how to eventually employ the Homes4Life certification scheme and in relation with our future pilot projects.

Open workshop on the first European Standard on the accessibility of the built environment

Homes4Life partners EUROCARERS (Nadia KAMEL) and ECTP (Alexis DAVID) attended the Open Workshop | Mandate M/420 and prEN 17210, on June 5th, Brussels.

Views from selected stakeholders were presented such as the European Disability Forum, the European Consumer Voice in Standardisation, International Union of Architects and the European Network for Accessible Tourism etc.

PrEN 17210 is a voluntary European standard that provides functional requirements and recommendations for an accessible and usable built environment – following a design for all approach, including persons with disabilities.

Legislators can choose to make reference to a standardisation document or to part of it (e.g. in regulations). The European standard is a stand-alone document with only functional requirements. In parallel countries can  choose to follow Technical Report 1 – which provides more detailed technical specification.

The process for standardisation is a lengthy one. This particular standard saw the participation from 34 countries and active participation from national standardisation bodies from AT, BE, DK, FR , DE, IE, IT, NO, ES, SE, CH, UK. In terms of getting this standard officially approved and adopted, there is between 18 April 2019 to 11 July 2019 an ongoing enquiry vote i.e. National vote via CEN and Cenelec members

The standard can be used:

  • as a criterion for awarding public contracts
  • To assist public procurers, architects, engineers, facility managers, ergonomists in their work
  • To specify design and assess conformity using a common framework and language ensuring accessibility for all
  • For accessibility building legislation

Is based to a great extent on ISO 21542 and where not sufficient supplemented with references to other standards

  • Formulated with qualitative terms and describing objectives which have to be reached “protection goals” Pr EN 17210 has a different approach to many national standards on accessibility and usability with no technical specifications or measurements. It is innovative in that it uses figures (see picture below)  to support better understanding about functionality – e.g show different solutions e.g handrails
  • Based on the diversity of a wide range of users
  • In this way not intended to conflict with national accessibility standards

Homes4Life presented by AGE Platform at ISHF2019

Our partner AGE Platform – Estelle Huchet and Nhu Tram – presented Homes4Life at the International Social Housing Festival 2019 in Lyon, France.

Homes4Life exhibition corner at ISHF 2019

Read below the pitch of the project prepared by AGE Platform for ISHF 2019 :

What is the purpose of innovations if they cannot be scale up, and make a change in the life of the many? Certification is too often seen as a straightjacket hindering innovation, disregarding local specificities and preventing the development of personalized solutions. The Homes4Life project aims at developing a European certification scheme for ageing in place. Our consortium of nine European partners is grasping expertise from various domains, from architects to social scientists, civil society representatives and engineers. We are studying how to give a boost to the development of housing options that would accommodate our changing lifestyle choices, needs and preferences as we age – so we can stay at home, until the end. A multi-stakeholder cooperation is critical in that context as we want our certification scheme to respect the various cultural contexts and field of work in which it may be implemented. We want people to feel at home, to feel safe, to feel independent at any age. If these feelings may translate into different construction realities, some common grounds start to become known as we travel Europe to exchange with various stakeholders, and interact with different types of households. This conversation will be a governing principle of our project – not for the sake of it, but because it is the only way to ensure our certification scheme strikes the good balance between scaling up innovations, remaining adaptable enough. We are sure you have tons of good ideas; so we invite you to come to us and make sure those do not remain the privilege of a happy few.

Download the slides presented at ISHF 2019

Connected Health Summer School – Smart Homes for Healthy Ageing

Dementia causes problems with memory that can make it difficult to carry out everyday activities, for example dressing, cooking, remembering appointments and taking medication. As a result, people living with dementia (PLwD) require varying levels of support to complete everyday activities and to maintain a level of independence. If nothing is done, this loss of independence, can have huge negative impact on PLwD, and may cause confusion, anxiety, embarrassment, or depression. Additionally, this decreasing ability to carry out daily activities can cause stress to family careers who worry about the person’s safety and well-being.  Connected devices  designed to support PLwD, in particular Smart Homes, may provide an opportunity to alleviate the burden faced by PLwD and their carers.

This Summer School has been designed for early career researchers and delegates who are focusing on the research and development of Smart Homes and health services for PLwD. Delegates are members of Public or private Organizations, interested in the Connected Health domain, willing to take part at the Summer School and parallel strategic initiatives events.

Further details and registration at : http://www.connectedhealth-summerschool.org