Thermal resiliency of single-family housing stock under extreme hot and cold conditions
Don Rukmal Liyanage, Kasun Hewage, Mehdi Ghobadi, Rehan Sadiq
Abstract
The building sector has gained attention due to its vulnerability to hazards such as heat waves in summer and power outages in winter, which have led to significant human health issues, including deaths. Thermal resiliency, which refers to a building’s capacity to cope and recover from weather-related events affecting indoor thermal conditions, lacks a systematic assessment approach considering future climate changes. This paper presents a framework for thermal resiliency assessment of buildings under future climatic conditions. The framework evaluates passive survivability under both hot and cold extreme events during a power outage or an HVAC system failure. A case study was conducted by considering code-compliant residential buildings located in different climatic regions. The study indicates that code-compliant buildings may overheat during hot extreme events without air conditioning in the future climate; however, severe indoor conditions can be avoided with passive measures like natural ventilation. The thermal resiliency of buildings under extreme conditions in cold regions is not adequate, as the buildings can reach severe indoor conditions within a four-day power outage, even with passive measures such as movable insulations. The proposed framework and study’s findings can serve as a valuable resource for policy-makers and researchers in developing climate adaptation measures.