Enhancing Buildings’ Thermal Resilience by Means of Passive Measures

Abstract

Enhancing building resilience is crucial to address the challenges posed by climate change and urbanization. The built environment significantly influences indoor comfort, energy efficiency, and the urban heat island (UHI) effect. The European Directive on Energy Performance of Buildings highlights the urgent need to reduce energy consumption and improve thermal comfort. To this extent, passive solutions offer a sustainable and cost-effective alternative to active systems. This study focuses on assessing the thermal resilience of build-ings in a Mediterranean urban district with different building configurations under both recent and future climate scenarios. This study intends to integrate climatic data, material properties, and energy performance metrics into a decision-support tool, helping stakeholders select optimal refurbishment strategies that enhance resilience, improve energy efficiency, and minimize environmental impact. To this end, EnergyPlus and City Energy Analyst are compared to model the thermal per-formance of buildings under various refurbishment scenarios. The methodology involves: collecting and analyzing site-specific climatic and case-study building performance data; simulating different passive strategies with special reference to the building envelope; assessing energy efficiency indicator, alongside thermal comfort.