Thesis title: Innovative and integrated energetic and bioclimatic strategies for adapting existing contexts to climate change and extreme events, aiming to mitigate the environmental impact
Rising temperatures cause significant global impacts, which, if not contained in a short time, can lead to serious dangers for the city and its inhabitants, especially in warm temperate climates. In particular, heat islands during the warmer season and heat waves are among the most dangerous extreme phenomena, and different design actions can affect mitigation and adaptation to them differently.
This research identifies strategies and actions that, in the short term, can mitigate the occurrence and impacts of heat waves and islands on the existing residential stock in warm temperate climates, selecting the most efficient and effective ones.
To this end, this thesis is developed with an experimental analytical approach based on a literature analysis and experimentation through simulations. The literature analysis allows for identifying the drivers that have the most significant influence on heat islands and heat waves, how morphology influences the phenomena above, and the possibilities of formulating a model to summarise their behaviour. On this basis, the author identifies the significant hazards that heat islands and heat waves can bring to the existing stock, the physical indicators that most influence their occurrence, and associates a set of indicators for each danger. Integrated with the literature, the analysis of best practices identifies mitigation and adaptation actions. The association to each hazard of a set of solutions capable of decreasing the onset of the extreme phenomena studied and the selection of the most effective and efficient actions allows the experimental part to be undertaken, where, through simulations with UWG generator, a method is identified for evaluating the effectiveness of the various actions selected. In this way, it is possible to identify the efficiency level as the technology and the morphology of the building change, while keeping the location and climatic conditions constant. Finally, the thesis is verified on three different pilot cases.
The research identifies the main hazards in the city brought by heat islands and heat waves, the actions capable of decreasing the occurrence of each hazard, and the effectiveness and efficiency levels of each technological solution. Furthermore, the thesis studies indoor and outdoor effectiveness and efficiency variations by varying the morphology and keeping the location constant. Finally, this research identifies a method, through the simulation of microclimates with the UWG generator, which can be used in any context to evaluate the effectiveness of individual actions or systems of actions concerning heat islands and heat waves.
This study shows that at the outdoor level, the effectiveness of an action in the same location, but placed in a morphologically different environment, presents slightly different levels of effectiveness. Conversely, when the location varies, even though it is in the same climatic zone, the level of effectiveness changes strongly. Indoor, effectiveness levels vary strongly depending on morphology, even in the same location, and are influenced by the composition of buildings.