Exploring Summer Thermal Discomfort in Vulnerable Households with Children through Citizen Science

Best Porter Award at CISBAT 2025, Hybrid International Scientific Conference, Lausanne, Switzerland, 3-5 September, 2025. Heat Watchers is a citizens science project that aims to understand the indoor effects of climate change on urban vulnerable households with children and to co-create adaptation solutions. Children participate in four training workshops at school and monitor indoor thermal comfort in their households using the Kit of Heat Watchers. The first edition of Heat Watchers engaged a hundred children aged 10-12 years old from three school in vulnerable areas of metropolitan area of Barcelona. Children collect data related to thermal comfort for 10-15 days in their households: indoor environmental data using sensors, their thermal comfort perception using the Heat Diary, and household’s characteristics and energy habits by responding the household survey. The thermal comfort assessment shows comfortable indoor conditions due to the mild weather during the monitoring period (average outdoor temperature around 20ºC). The main thermal comfort perception of children is neutral, followed by warmer perceptions (34.5%). A comparison between the children thermal comfort perception, indoor conditions and adaptive thermal comfort categories is done, revealing that further research is needed to understand the discrepancies between the children's perception and the comfort categories and their representativeness to evaluate the children thermal comfort.