Energy and Buildings, Vol.54, 73-80, 2012
Designing a methodology for integrating industry practice into a probabilistic overheating tool for future building performance
The Low Carbon Futures project, funded by the Adaptation and Resilience in a Changing Climate (ARCC) Programme, has the objective of using the latest UK climate projections (UKCP'09) to assess overheating in a range of domestic and non-domestic buildings. As these climate projections are probabilistic in nature, and dynamic building simulation is being used by the project to assess building performance, the information produced is vast. To understand how to filter this data into a useable tool that can interact with current building practices, the project has commissioned a range of focus groups to obtain practitioner feedback. These focus groups provide guidance on how buildings are currently designed with respect to overheating but also how future overheating risk assessments, incorporating probabilistic climate projections, might be carried out. This paper describes the assimilation of all this research into a coherent building simulation methodology that could be used by building practitioners to assess future overheating risks of a range of buildings, and provide guidance for applying adaptation solutions to prevent defined comfort thresholds being exceeded. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.