Abstract
Research indicates that school children have lower comfort levels than adults and this exacerbates the challenge of tackling the risks of summer overheating in schools without resorting to air conditioning. UN SDG 13 calls for climate action to strengthen the resilience of our cities and reduce the impact of climate change. In this work, a modern, naturally ventilated school in Southampton, UK was used to evaluate single, “hard”, passive retrofit measures and “soft”, building management solutions that could increase the wellbeing of students and reduce current and future demand for cooling. The school was selected as it represents the current standardised design guidance for schools released in 2012 by the Department of Education (DfE). The research presents air temperature observations collected during the summer of 2015. Dynamic thermal modelling was undertaken to evaluate passive retrofit and “soft” solutions to reduce the overheating risk. The model was validated with temperature data collected from the school classrooms. The results indicate that (a) such school buildings have high likelihood of overheating, based on children’s comfort temperatures and (b) passive retrofits focused on shading and ventilation could help to reduce the classroom temperature when required. It is recommended that “soft” adaptive solutions will prove effective to reduce future air conditioning demand, but this will require a radical change in established practices. Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 will require to rethink and redesign urban living and city infrastructures.
Highlights
Overheating in buildings has become a growing concern even in places with temperate climate [1]
The school was found to have a high likelihood of overheating, based on adaptive school children’s comfort model discussed in the previous work by Teli et al [11]. Results in this previous study showed that 64% of the classrooms had high risk of overheating
The results show that passive measures and adaptive behaviour could reduce the exposure of students and staff to high temperature internal environments
Summary
Overheating in buildings has become a growing concern even in places with temperate climate [1]. The observed increase in the global average temperature, the likelihood of more frequent and longer heat wave events [2] and the multiple impacts of the urban heat island effect [3] have further raised concerns about health in cities, especially in buildings without mechanical cooling. Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd to investigate the ability of buildings to maintain safe thermal conditions and protect the occupants from increasing temperatures. This work focuses on overheating and its energy implications in naturally ventilated school classrooms. In this respect, three Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are addressed, i.e. SDG13 (Climate Action), SDG11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG3 (Good Health and Wellbeing) [5]
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