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Elderly people are known to be more vulnerable than the general population to a range of weatherrelated hazards such as heat waves, icy conditions and cold periods. In the Nordic region, some of these hazards are projected to change their frequency and intensity in the future, while at the same time strong increases are projected in the proportion of elderly in the population. This paper reports results from three projects studying the potential impacts of climate change on elderly people in the Nordic region. An interactive web-based tool has been developed for mapping and combining indicators of climate change vulnerability of the elderly, by municipality, across three Nordic countries: Finland, Norway and Sweden. The tool can also be used for projecting temperaturerelated mortality in Finland under different projections of future climate. The approach to vulnerability mapping differs from most previous studies in which researchers selected the indicators to combine into an index. Here, while researchers compile data on indicators that can be accessed in the mapping tool, the onus is on the users of the tool to decide which indicators are of interest and whether to map them individually or as combined indices.Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10113-014-0688-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. 123Reg Environ Change (2016) 16:43-58 DOI 10.1007 Stakeholders with responsibility for the care and welfare of the elderly were engaged in the study through interviews and a workshop. They affirmed the usefulness of the prototype mapping tool for raising awareness about climate change as a potential risk factor for the elderly and offered suggestions on potential refinements, which have now been implemented. These included adding background information on possible adaptation measures for ameliorating the impacts of extreme temperatures, and improved representation of uncertainties in projections of future exposure and adaptive capacity.

Smart metering is advancing rapidly and consumption feedback from smart meters is expected to help residents to reduce their energy and water consumption. In recent years, more critical views have been expressed based on theories of social practice, arguing that smart meter feedback ignores the role of various mundane practices where energy and water are consumed and instead targets individuals as active decision-makers. We present a review of qualitative studies on smart meter feedback and results of a survey to European smart metering projects. We argue that theories of social practice can be used to reframe the challenges and potentials of smart meter feedback that have been identified in the literature and our survey. This presents challenges of smart meter feedback as resulting from normalised resource intensive practices rather than from uninterested and comfort-loving individuals. Potentials of improving the effectiveness of smart meter feedback relate to supporting communities and peer-learning and combining smart meter feedback with micro-generation of renewable energy. This has implications for how domestic energy and water consumption is targeted by policy.term energy transition to refer to a systemic change from (the current), fossil-fuel based energy system where residents are mere consumers of energy, towards a system based on intermittent renewable energy sources and also involving power generation in smaller units, including the household and community level. The role of residents is expected to change in future smart energy systems and concepts of 'energy citizen' or 'citizen-consumer' and 'co-provider' have been used to describe residents who are actively engaged in the management of energy [7,8]. There are already examples of communities of front-runners in which learning from peers has contributed to increasing energy efficiency [9][10][11]. In a more critical context, the concept of 'Resource Man' has been introduced [12], referring to the ideal energy consumer that smart metering projects are targeted to.The objectives of smart electricity metering range from peak load management and reducing total demand to fraud detection and accurate billing [13] (p. 447). In the case of water metering, improved leak detection is also an important factor motivating smart meter roll-outs, in addition to the aim of decreasing the overall consumption of water e.g., [14]. There is variation in what residents see of the meters, from no direct information to in-home displays, websites or mobile applications visualising consumption in real-time [15].Large smart metering roll-out programs are under way or being planned throughout the developed countries. It is expected that by 2020 nearly 72% of European consumers will have a smart meter for electricity and 40% for gas [16]. The Energy Efficiency Directive of the EU also encourages the use of in-home displays [17], and the EU's 2015 Strategic Energy Technology Plan emphasises the need to provide smart solutions for energy consumers to enable them to optimise thei...

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