Resilient cooling strategies – A critical review and qualitative assessment

The global effects of climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of extreme events such as heatwaves and power outages, which have consequences for buildings and their cooling systems. Buildings and their cooling systems should be designed and operated to be resilient under such events to protect occupants from potentially dangerous indoor thermal conditions. This study performed a critical review on the state-of-the-art of cooling strategies, with special attention to their performance under heatwaves and power outages. We proposed a definition of resilient cooling and described four criteria for resilience—absorptive capacity, adaptive capacity, restorative capacity, and recovery speed —and used them to qualitatively evaluate the resilience of each strategy. The literature review and qualitative analyses show that to attain resilient cooling, the four resilience criteria should be considered in the design phase of a building or during the planning of retrofits. The building and relevant cooling system characteristics should be considered simultaneously to withstand extreme events. A combination of strategies with different resilience capacities, such as a passive envelope strategy coupled with a low-energy space-cooling solution, may be needed to obtain resilient cooling. Finally, a further direction for a quantitative assessment approach has been pointed out

International Energy Agency EBC Annex 80 - Resilient Cooling of Buildings - State of the Art Review

The world is facing a rapid increase of air conditioning of buildings. This is driven by multiple factors, such as urbanization and densification, climate change and elevated comfort expectations together with economic growth in hot and densely populated regions of the world. The trend towards cooling seems inexorable therefore it is mandatory to guide this development towards sustainable solutions. Against this background, it is the motivation of Annex 80 to develop, assess and communicate solutions of resilient cooling and overheating protection. Resilient Cooling is used to denote low energy and low carbon cooling solutions that strengthen the ability of individuals and our community as a whole to withstand, and also prevent, thermal and other impacts of changes in global and local climates. It encompasses the assessment and Research &amp; Development of both active and passive cooling technologies of the following four groups: - Reduce heat loads to people and indoor environments. - Remove sensible heat from indoor environments. - Enhance personal comfort apart from space cooling. - Remove latent heat from indoor environments. The Annex 80’s main objective is to support a rapid transition to an environment where resilient low energy and low carbon cooling systems are the mainstream and preferred solutions for cooling and overheating issues in buildings.<br/