The impact of future UK heat wave to the thermal resilience in office and residential buildings – a comparison

Abstract

Heat waves are abnormal effects within the UK but significantly increase discomfort for building occupants. This study expands a previous residential unit study to include an office building to assess the thermal resilience of buildings. Heat wave periods were identified for London and Birmingham in the UK with overheating contrasted against a whole cooling season for different building characteristics. A future weather file from 2080 was used to increase the incidents of heat wave events using TM52 to define overheating. The TM52 three measurement criteria were modified to allow contrasts to be made between short- and long-term overheating. A combination of a heavyweight and shading (or elevated air velocity) provides resilience against heat wave events in offices and residences. In heat wave periods, a greater number of overheating hours and heat stress hours occur in a residential unit compared to an office building. A lightweight building is less resilient against heat stress peaks without shading or elevated air velocity. During heat wave events, offices only experience part of their overall overheating but residential units experience all (or lack) of their overheating metrics during the identified heat wave periods.