Abstract
Residential buildings must respond to indoor environments suitable for the comfort and health of an intergenerational and varied population. Particular attention must be paid to the elderly, especially taking into account that this part of the population will be higher in future scenarios, and to people with disabilities or chronic illnesses who also spend most of the time at home. On the other hand, population socio-economically disadvantaged and related to energy poverty are also vulnerable, since they have to deal with the conditioning of their house with very low resources. Heatwaves are the deadliest event related to climate change in Southern Europe, and besides warmer summers, people face them mainly in their houses with or without cooling systems, depending on the climate zone. Therefore, residential buildings must protect all occupants from warmer conditions especially the most vulnerable, and designs based on passive measures are thus recommended. Approaches that optimize naturally conditioned buildings should be prioritized, taking into account the thresholds that result in the need of active cooling systems in order to protect the health of the most vulnerable people.
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Notes
- 1.
Includes France.
- 2.
In this report, Southern Europe is Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Gibraltar, Greece, Holy See (Vatican City State), Italy, Malta, Montenegro, Portugal, San Marino, Serbia (including Kosovo), Slovenia, Spain (including Canary Islands and Ceuta and Melilla) and TYR Macedonia (United Nations, 2014).
- 3.
Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) is a statistic index based on the research developed by Povl O. Fanger, and widely recognized, used and implemented in comfort standards since 70s of the last century. Based on thermal balance of the human body, it will result from the combination of factors as metabolic rate, clothing, air temperature, mean radiant temperature, air velocity and relative humidity in the environment. PMV provides us information about the mean value of votes over thermal satisfaction that a group of people would emit in an indoor environment.
- 4.
Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied (PPD) is directly related to PMV and establishes a quantitative prediction of the percentage of thermally dissatisfied people determined from PMV.
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The authors want to thank the assistance of Ainhoa Arriazu in the collection of information and in the elaboration of some graphs provided in this chapter.
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Monge-Barrio, A., Sánchez-Ostiz Gutiérrez, A. (2018). Vulnerable and Non-vulnerable Occupants in Residential Buildings. In: Passive Energy Strategies for Mediterranean Residential Buildings. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69883-0_3
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