A Review of Passive Design Strategies and Their Effect on Thermal Resilience in Low-Income Households

Abstract

Climate change is causing more frequent and extreme weather events (e.g., heat waves and ice storms) that disproportionately impact low-income households with poor building conditions. Passive design strategies offer a promising solution to enhance building thermal resilience; however, little is known about their actual application and effectiveness in low-income households under different climate conditions. This paper presents a scoping literature review of 123 articles that evaluated passive design strategies applied to low-income housing contexts. The detailed article review shows that wall-and roof-related passive design strategies (e.g., insulation, sealing) are the most frequently studied and effective strategies, increasing comfort hours and energy savings with a wide variation of up to 24 % and 67 %, respectively. Combined strategies often outperformed individual strategies. In contrast, some studies reported unintended consequences following the adoption of passive design strategies, such as increases in energy demand reaching as high as 50 %. Such findings shed light on the need for design processes to consider multiple performance metrics, as well as behavioural and socio-economic factors that require more in-depth investigation, such as energy poverty and rebound effects. Detailed recommendations are finally provided to guide future research and applications on the topic, covering the need to (i) explore and combine underrepresented thermal resilience strategies and metrics, (ii) follow more standardized reporting practices, (iii) quantify costs and identify implementation barriers, and (iv) integrate participatory research methods to support technical assessments with contextual knowledge of the studied low-income households and communities.