Abstract
A great deal of literature has been published in recent years around the need to mitigate climate change and the building industry is already working to make buildings more energy efficient. However, some changes to our climate cannot be avoided so we will need to change the way we design, construct, refurbish and use buildings to adapt to the likely increases in temperature. A great proportion of British housing is now being built using Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) systems, and this number is expected to rise significantly over the next decade. All systems are potentially able to deliver good buildings, so how to choose? Sustainability should be the order, but it is only achievable if future climate resilience is considered. Otherwise, the use of MMC to build dwellings that use less energy for heating today could result in a future undesirable scenario when energy for cooling is also needed. In this work, the occurrence of overheating today and in the future in a highly insulated 100m2 space built using eight different walls constructions has been investigated in a parametric study. The building was dynamically simulated with few parameters to allow easy comparison of the performance of each constructive system. It was found that there is a high risk of overheating in houses and this risk will not be mitigated by one solution alone. Although this not a comprehensive study by any means, it is the start of a discussion to instigate further research that could inform design decisions that address future climate resilience.
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Rodrigues, L., Gillott, M. (2013). Building for Future Climate Resilience. In: Hakansson, A., Höjer, M., Howlett, R., Jain, L. (eds) Sustainability in Energy and Buildings. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, vol 22. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36645-1_43
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36645-1_43
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