Equitable Heat-Resilience in Neighborhoods
This research seeks to extend an existing urban modeling interface (Umi) developed at MIT to provide urban planners (in private practice or in government agencies) with evidence-based assessments of measures intended to mitigate life-threatening extreme heat events. These events are increasingly common, are made more severe by a combination of regional climate change and the urban heat island effect, disproportionately impact low- and middle-income urban inhabitants and are exacerbated by lack of access to space cooling and interrupted supply of needed electricity.
The research will assess the performance of base-case buildings and urban form under current and midcentury- projected heat waves; assess the technical effectiveness and cost of single measures intended to mitigate the impact of urban heat waves; and assess the impact of integrated approaches (urban form, building and urban technologies, inhabitant behavior), with particular attention to heat-vulnerable populations.
Funding for this project was provided by the Sidara Urban Seed Grant Program at the Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Team
Les Norford, David P. Birge, John Fernandez, Norhan Bayomi, Eric Wong, Zhujing Zhang, Jonathon Brearley, Shiyan Yin, Yichuan Shi, Patricia Chan, Keili Tucker
Publications
- Zhang, Z., Kircher, K. J., Cai, Y., Brearley, J. G., Birge, D. P., & Norford, L. K. (2023). Mitigating peak load and heat stress under heatwaves by optimizing adjustments of fan speed and thermostat setpoint. Journal of Building Performance Simulation, 16(4), 493–506. https://doi.org/10.1080/19401493.2023.2180538