Housing Design for Health in a Changing Climate for Remote Indigenous Communities in Semi-Arid Australia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a well-written and comprehensive paper that deals with a complex topic and manages to synthesize a body of relevant information and findings from the investigations of the multidisciplinary author team. I would think that this is a valuable and important paper to build up a body of knowledge in this area for others to draw on and contribute to.

I could see the paper to be published as is. However, I wonder if there is a way to attempt to synthesise some of the main findings for a reader more explicitly as an overview since the paper deals with so many different factors and findings. The broad scope is also a strength of the paper and is the nature of the topic. However, I wonder if there is a way to present the key findings. Perhaps as key takeaways? Or as an overview table? Or is a table is too simplistic? I would like to ask the authors to consider if there is a way to condense their key findings and add that to the conclusion, without making it overly simplistic so that it does an injustice to the topic. Perhaps a list of key takeaways is the easiest way to do that but there may be other, better formats.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall the paper is to be commended for bringing together Australian Indigenous housing history and culture, technical housing knowledge, health professionals, and Indigenous elders and stakeholders. However there are several areas of the paper that could do with clarification or further exploration.

Air Conditioning: I feel the paper would benefit from a formal definition/explanation of the types of air conditioning referred to. Variously in the paper 'Evaporative' conditioning seems to refer to simply open windows - breeze - sometimes called 'ventilation' or the use of a ducted evaporative cooling system (colloquially a swampie) also refered to in the paper as 2 stage evaporative cooling. At time air conditioning and reverse cycle air conditioning are used interchangeably. Aside from terminology, a discussion of the different modes of cooling for these systems would be helpful to a lay audience. RC air conditioning extracts heat from the air (external to the dwelling) and then releases that air into the dwelling. To be effective windows and doors need to be closed to prevent the mechanically cooled air from escaping. Evaporative coolers cool the air by a few degrees by running external temp air over a water system and then push the air through the house. To be effective at least some doors and windows need to be open as the cooling occurs due to air movement against the skin (a form of convection) not because the air is colder. Trapping this air inside just adds hot, humid air to the dwelling - but on page 12 the first paragraph of section 8.2 suggests that the dwelling needs to be airtight for evaporative cooling unlike for 'ventialtion through operable windows'. 

Housing Design: The paper presents options and thermal comfort assessments for high thermal mass dwellings (the SIHIP model) and for lightweight models (similar to some HOIL dwellings built by IBA a decade ago). A note on the climate software ratings here: previous green star (NatHERS) ratings on contemporary Indigenous community housing in the NT  found that in addition to orientation, insulation, window size etc. window opacity had a significant effect (as some dwelling models used opaque louvre windows for privacy). Room designation in the software - whether you designated a space a bedroom or a living room also changed the calculations due to the expected hours of occupancy of the room. In remote Indigenous communities those assumptions were often questionable.

A brief paragraph in section 10 mentions the possibility of a hybrid (thermal mass/lightweight) option as further research. But this issue touches on a fundamental one for Indigenous housing - the conflict between government asset protection and allowing residents to modify their dwellings to facilitate changing circumstances (particularly regarding visitors and overcrowding). A solid core that included the key health hardware (kitchen, bathrooms, toilets, laundry) - surrounded by a lightweight structure that accommodated living and sleeping spaces, both internal (lockable) and external, would allow for greater flexibility in accommodating changes in overcrowding and thermal comfort needs. However, this would require an acceptance of a degree of self-determination current governments find problematic, and overlapping these design considerations are needs for safety, durability and maintenance (particularly for lightweight structures). The paper noted the potential of external yard spaces to mitigate comfort and health issues through shade and dust suppression but could have gone further here as many Indigenous living and social practices involve external as well as internal occupation of dwellings.

Energy Literacy: Several issues here. My experience of the use of power cards by Indigenous households in the NT is that the level of knowledge about the energy use of various appliances is high from necessity and effective house-bosses put in place strategies to preserve power for use when needed i.e. if hot weather is expected and they know that the AC will be required. Visitors understood this as well and power cards were often to compensate house owners. The nexus of thermal comfort and health was also widely understood in my experience particularly with regards to young children and older adults such that AC use was more often seen as good parenting than for personal comfort. 

Also here there is the role of housing providers such as Territory Housing (TH) and organisations such as CAAHC (formally Tangentyere Housing). My understanding from around 10 years ago is that TH supported evaporative coolers in new and refurbished dwellings but not any form of heating, or existing RC systems. This is not evident in the current paper which treats all forms of heating/cooling as essentially the same (things may have changed in regards to TH's responsibilities). But there is a significant difference when one form of cooling is supported and (in theory) maintained by the housing provider while another is not. So it is a live question as to who is responsible for supplying, installing and maintaining a solar power system with battery to run a RC air conditioner? Regarding household education provision by government or utility suppliers, many of these have been conducted in communities over the years - covering energy audits, tenancy management, and post-occupancy studies. As noted above about the level of energy literacy of people who use power cards and can be (and have been) cut off suggests that it is not knowledge but low income coupled with high demand that is the underlying issue resulting in negative health impacts. 

Lastly, to conclude, the multi-disciplined approach is appropriate and necessary for this research but the paper as it stands feels somewhat dis-jointed and would benefit from an effort to integrate more fully the different perspectives of culture, housing technology, and health - covering much the same ground but bringing them together in a few key themes (instead of 8 topics).

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the paper. It seems to me an interesting, well-focused and well-documented contribution to a topic that, in various ways, is of increasing interest to many communities across the globe. As a suggestion, the conclusions may seem a bit generic right now. They could be made even more consistent t if they provided a more specific review of the issues addressed throughout the paper.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf