Abstract
The predicted increase in temperatures resulting from climate change is likely to generate an alarming rate of health-related risks for vulnerable groups of people. While there is a growing attention on people protection strategies, governments are mainly promoting the implementation of mitigating measures to reduce energy demand from buildings. In European countries, low-energy buildings are designed with a view of securing winter comfort, hence they incorporate strategies for reducing energy demand for heating via an optimised building fabric that reduces thermal transmittance through insulation and controlled ventilation with heat recovery.
Such energy-efficient strategies, if improperly implemented, can aggravate overheating – this point has been made in the literature, which has evidenced an increased risk of overheating in highly insulated low-energy residential buildings in temperate climates as a result of a combination of inadequate ventilation provision and absence of solar control.
Most recent thermal comfort studies have focused on the human capacity to adapt (up to a certain level) to changing temperatures. Related to this, specific scientific attention has been paid to adaptive measures of comfort. Comfort is a multidimensional system, which includes several sensorial perceptions, such as sight, sound, smell, and memory) as well as other factors affecting such perceptions.
This paper explores the complex relationship between comfort, human behaviour, and lowenergy building design in the face of climate change and asks how occupant actions can help mitigate overheating.
Bridging the gap between building science and building practice, this paper presents forefront research on climate change risk and on adaptive means of comfort. The advanced research question was how human-building interactions can reduce exposure to climate change induced overheating in low-energy buildings. This objective was specifically tackled by critically reviewing field work studies on comfort and human-building interactions affecting indoor temperatures in low-energy buildings during a warming climate. Overall, the performed research highlights the importance of a multifaceted approach to reducing vulnerability to overheating, considering both building design and human behaviour.