Evaluating the Resilience of VC+ Low Energy Primary Schools to Climate Change

Mitigating the risk of overheating and associated thermal discomfort inside school classrooms is a global concern due to its significant impacts on students’ academic performance, health and wellbeing. Thus, rising ambient temperatures resulting from climate change can be challenging, especially in low energy schools designed to optimise their heating season performance. According to recent studies, many low energy school buildings fail to meet comfort standards and experience overheating, resulting in low student productivity and the need for using air conditioning systems. The aims of this study were to, firstly, understand and define resilient cooling for low energy primary school buildings based on four resilience criteria. Secondly, determine the periods of time during the year when classroom environments are vulnerable to overheating and its impacts on students’ academic performance (the possibility of overheating risk) and whether ventilative cooling low energy primary schools are resistant under extreme future file. To achieve these aims, two classrooms in one recently built ventilative cooling low energy primary school in Ireland were modelled using IES-VE. The overheating levels in extreme weather conditions were specified based on the number of hours in which classrooms experience overheating when indoor air temperatures exceed upper overheating thresholds according to typical overheating standards and thresholds that reflect academic performance of primary students. The resistance of the classrooms was assessed based on an overheating escalator factor. Findings show that while according to typical overheating standards, the classrooms in Cork and Kilkenny are not vulnerable to overheating in future extreme weather conditions, evaluations based on the overheating escalation factor and recommended threshold for students’ productivity showed the classrooms in Cork and Kilkenny were vulnerable to overheating risk and could not resist it.