Overheating Risk Analysis in Long-Term Care Homes-Development of Overheating Limit Criteria

Climate heat waves occurring in urban centers are a serious threat to public health and wellbeing. Historically, most heat-related mortalities have arisen from excessive overheating of building interiors housing older occupants. This paper developed an approach that combines the results from building simulation and bioheat models to generate health-based limit criteria for overheating in long-term care homes (LTCHs) by which the body dehydration and core temperature of older residents are capped during overheating events. The models of the LTCHs were created for buildings representative of old and current construction practices for selected Canadian locations. The models were calibrated using measurements of indoor temperature and humidity acquired from monitoring the building interiors and the use of published building energy use intensity data. A general procedure to identify overheating events and quantify their attributes in terms of duration, intensity, and severity was developed and applied to LTCHs to generate the limit criteria. Comparing the limit criteria from the proposed and comfort-based methods showed evident differences. The proposed method predicted the overheating risk consistent with the overall thermal comfort during overheating events in contrast to the comfort-based methods. The new limit criteria are intended to be used in any study to evaluate overheating risk in similar buildings.

Automated summary

Climate heat waves in urban areas pose a serious threat to public health. This study developed a method to generate health-based limit criteria for overheating in long-term care homes by combining building simulation and bioheat models. The criteria take into account body dehydration and core temperature of older residents during overheating events. The models were calibrated using measurements of indoor temperature and humidity, and a procedure was developed to identify and quantify overheating events. The new criteria predicted overheating risk consistently with overall thermal comfort during overheating events, in contrast to comfort-based methods.