Assessing climate change and urban heat island vulnerabilities in a built environment

Abstract

A methodology is presented to assess local criticalities and resilience to climate changes (CC) and UHI (Urban Heat Island). This analysis will consider the expected impacts on the local energy demand of the built environment due to climate-related variations. Climate-related indicators are proposed to assess a vulnerability index to CC and UHI in specific building-design contexts. Furthermore, these indicators will be applied to a set of locations in the Mediterranean climate while taking into consideration different local contexts to evaluate the resilience of a sample residential building by using, among other strategies, dynamic energy simulations.

Keywords

• urban heat island
• climate changes
• resilient buildings
• climate resilience indicators