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Huge efforts have been made in recent decades to improve energy saving in the building sector, particularly focused on the role of façades. Among the explored viable solutions, climate-adaptive building shells [CABS] consider promising solutions to control solar radiation, both in terms of illuminance and heating levels, but are still piloting these solutions due to their complex designs and necessary costs. The present study aims to provide a speedy but reliable methodology to evaluate the potential impacts of adopting active/passive CABS systems during the preliminary design stage. The proposed methodology allows the evaluation and comparison, when multiple options are considered, of the effects of each solution in terms of the energy needs, thermal comfort and lighting, while reducing the required effort and time for an extensive analysis of the overall building level. This is based on the use of a "virtual test room" where different conditions and configurations can be explored. A case study in the city of Bologna is included for demonstration purposes. The achieved results support the decisions made regarding energy behavior (over/under heating), indoor comfort, lighting and energy at an early design stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evidences of the influence of climate change (CC) in most of the key sectors of human activities are frequently reported by the news and media with increasing concern. The building sector, and particularly energy use in the residential sector, represents a crucial field of investigation as demonstrated by specific scientific literature. The paper reports a study on building energy consumption and the related effect on indoor thermal comfort considering the impacts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2018 report about temperature increase projection. The research includes a case study in New York City, assuming three different scenarios. The outcomes evidence a decrease in energy demand for heating and an increase in energy demand for cooling, with a relevant shift due to the summer period temperature variations. The challenge of the last decades for sustainable design was to increase insulation for improving thermal behavior, highly reducing the energy demand during winter time, however, the projections over the next decades suggest that the summer regime will represent a future and major challenge in order to reduce overheating and ensure comfortable (or at least acceptable) living conditions inside buildings. The growing request of energy for cooling is generating increasing pressure on the supply system with peaks in the case of extreme events that lead to the grid collapse and to massive blackouts in several cities. This is usually tackled by strengthening the energy infrastructure, however, the users' behavior and lifestyle will strongly influence the system capacity in stress conditions. This study focuses on the understanding of these phenomena and particularly on the relevance of the users' perception of indoor comfort, assuming the IPCC projections as the basis for a future scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While indoor comfort represents a widely investigated research topic with relation to sustainable development and energy-demand reduction in the built environment, outdoor comfort remains an open field of study, especially with reference to the impacts of climate change and the quality of life for inhabitants, particularly in urban contexts. Despite the relevant efforts spent in the last few decades to advance the understanding of phenomena and the knowledge in this specific field, which obtained much evidence for the topic's relevance, a comprehensive picture of the studies, as well as a classification of the interconnected subjects and outcomes, is still lacking. This paper reports the outcomes of a literature review aimed at screening the available resources dealing with outdoor thermal comfort, in order to provide a state-of-the-art review that identifies the main topics focused by the researchers, as well as the barriers in defining suitable indexes for assessing thermal comfort in outdoor environments. Although several accurate models and software are available to quantify outdoor human comfort, the evocated state of mind of the final user still remains at the core of this uncertain process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite studies on thermal comfort being consolidated in the scientific literature, people's well-being in some specific conditions and places, such as hospitals, requires to be further explored. The paper describes the methodological approach adopted to evaluate thermal comfort level and perception of pregnant women hosted in the obstetric ward of a test-bed case (Sant'Orsola hospital in Bologna, Italy). The methodology adopts a mixed approach that compares the results of on-site monitoring by probe (as quantitative data) with the ones of a survey (questionnaire form) delivered to the involved subjects (as qualitative data) to understand if metabolic alteration may influence the pregnant women's perception of comfort conditions. The first follows ISO 7730, the second, ISO 10551. The comparison between the instrumental collected data and the outcomes of the survey revealed a wide gap between TSV (Thermal Sensation Vote) and PMVm (Predicted Mean Vote, measured on-site). The reason can be identified in the use of a standardized metabolic unit from ISO that does not correctly reflect the physiologic condition of pregnant women. Following a trial and error methodology, a met value for pregnant women is accordingly proposed. Moreover, an adaptive thermal comfort approach is adopted. This research is a first step towards the definition of specific thermal comfort in a hospital ward hosting pregnant women and more generally offers a reflection about the need to define specific met in the standards for some particular categories (children, elderly, pregnant women, etc.) when investigating thermal comfort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]