Grant: Advancing Climate Change Science in Canada

Overheating of building interior spaces as may arise from climate change and extreme heat events has beenidentified as a major concern to the comfort and health of building occupants particularly of the vulnerablepeople such as the elderly, children, the physically challenged or the sick. To ensure the resiliency of Canadianbuildings against overheating, and protect Canadians' health from a changing climate, the proposed researchfocuses on assessing summertime overheating risks during heat waves in buildings housing vulnerablepopulations through field measurements under the current climate, and providing mitigation solutions usingvalidated computer models under predicted future climates. The research activities are organized as follows: 1).Field monitoring: Indoor thermal conditions of 11 selected buildings and exterior climatic conditions will bemonitored to assess risks of summertime overheating. 2). Simulations: Development of urban-scalemicroclimate model and building-scale overheating model. The urban-scale model will be to simulate thesurrounding microclimate effects on specific buildings to be applied to detailed whole building simulations topredict indoor thermal conditions under extreme heat events. 3). Mitigations: Development of mitigationstrategies by considering urban-scale microclimate and climate change for different Canadian climatic zones.4). Guidelines: Development of design guidelines to support the ongoing NRC projects under the ""ClimateResilience Buildings and Core Public Infrastructure"" program to develop guidelines and changes to buildingcodes for climate resilience design of commercial and residential buildings. In close collaborations with NRC,ECCC and HC, the project will produce significant outcomes including 1). Forecasting computer models anddesign guidelines for assessing and mitigating summertime overheating; 2). Support for the development ofclimate adaptive building codes and standards; 3). Information necessary to municipal and provincial heathauthorities to help mitigate the effects of overheating in buildings, and 4). Training the next generation HQPsready for solving climate change related building design issues.