A recently published study in Building and Environment explores approaches to the evaluation of thermal safety of residential homes during extreme heat events. Suggestions are provided for three distinct vulnerability profiles which could guide evidence-based retrofit prioritization and emergency response planning:
Urbanization and large-scale meteorological forcing intensify impacts from extreme heat events globally, with most heat-related deaths occurring indoors. Understanding the relationship between heat and where people live is therefore an urgent topical area. Here, we introduce a Monte Carlo approach that bridges nationally representative building models with local property records for developing the heat impact – housing analysis. Using our novel approach, we improve mapping by reducing uncertainty from 40–60 % to below 3 %. This allows the development of more representative physiological heat risk metrics quantifying both cumulative and consecutive exposure to dangerous conditions. We demonstrate our methodology for Austin, Texas, and identify three distinct vulnerability profiles during heatwave-blackout scenarios: high-resilience buildings providing safe conditions, moderate-vulnerability buildings approaching dangerous thresholds, and critical-risk buildings rapidly crossing survivability thresholds…click here to continue reading