Chapter 22Climate Resilience and the Design of Smart Buildings

Saranya Gunasingh¹, Nora Wang², Doug Ahl³ and Scott Schuetter³

¹Seventhwave, Chicago, IL, USA

²Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Washington, DC, USA

³Seventhwave, Madison, WI, USA

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• To understand the large ecological footprint of cities that stems from high energy use in buildings and to become familiar with existing policies and programs that address the issue.
• To provide a brief overview of several voluntary programs initiated by city and national governments and professional organizations to mitigate GHG emissions. The shortcomings of such programs, which are a hindrance to achieve emission reduction goals and are examined here.
• The chapter familiarizes the concept of climate-resilient building design to building designers and owners and presents the need to be proactive with current new construction and building retrofits.
• Using climate data of the past for future buildings leads to misrepresentation of projected future energy use. The research work discussed in this chapter identifies a method to address this uncertainty, so that both building owners and city infrastructure can be adequately equipped for climate induced energy use variations.