A multi-objective optimization framework for analyzing thermal resilience under power outage and varying climatic conditions

Abstract

Increased severity and frequency of extreme weather events pose a threat to building occupants’ health and wellbeing, prompting researchers to investigate thermal resilience of buildings in difficult scenarios. Analyzing the resilience of buildings under past and future weather conditions, while studying variations in design parameters can help quantify risks. Current methods lack a systematic approach to quantify and optimize passive survivability. This study applies a novel methodology that integrates building energy simulation, multi-objective optimization, and thermal resilience under extreme climatic conditions and power outage scenarios. The method was applied to a case study building located in Montreal, Canada, to evaluate how six design variables—orientation, thermal mass, solar absorptance, glazing U-value, glazing solar transmittance, and overhang shading influence thermal resilience, energy consumption and thermal comfort. Mathematical models were developed to correlate the variables to summer and winter passive survivability. The research determined that for the studied scenarios, solar absorptance is the design variable with the highest impact on passive survivability and that design changes to improve winter passive survivability may decrease summer passive survivability suggesting the need to integrate passive ventilation strategies to balance overall survivability outcomes.