Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing humankind in the 21st century. In the building sector, a warming climate will significantly affect building heating and cooling loads, as well as building occupant health, comfort and wellbeing. School buildings in the UK, in particular, might face additional challenges, such as indoor overheating risks due to high internal gains in classrooms, and their current reliance on natural ventilation, which might offer limited cooling capacity in the future.
This paper presents a secondary school building stock indoor environment modelling framework for London. The aim of the present study is to explore the impacts of ongoing and future climate change on schoolchildren’s cognitive performance levels.
Using the PDSP (Property Data Survey Programme) dataset and a basic set of school building archetypes for London, a parametric stock modelling framework was developed. Weather files based on existing Test Reference Years (TRY) incorporating the UK Climate Projections 2009 scenarios were used. This study provides a detailed assessment of school building stock indoor thermal performance and students’ cognitive performance. It was found that building thermal properties and ventilation rates can function as reliable predictors of students’ cognitive performance, and their impacts were quantified in this study. A sensitivity analysis aiming to identify the relative importance of these factors will be conducted as part of ongoing research
