An improved model of indoor overheating degree that integrates weather and building parameters for thermal resilience evaluation

Abstract

The increasing frequency and severity of heat events driven by global warming highlight the need to assess the thermal resilience of buildings under normal operating conditions. The indoor overheating degree (IOD) is a widely adopted metric for quantifying thermal performance. However, its applicability to diverse building thermal resilience assessments is limited due to a lack of relevant data. To address this, this study introduced an improved IOD model that integrates weather conditions and building parameters for the evaluation of indoor thermal performance. The model’s effectiveness was demonstrated through a case study of a residential building in Guangzhou, China. In this study, the most influential factor on the IOD was the outdoor temperature, followed by solar radiation transmittance, the heat transfer coefficient of wall and window, lastly the indoor heat dissipation values. The results showed that by reducing the heat transfer coefficients of walls and windows by 80% and the solar radiation transmittance by 66.7% have yielded IOD reductions of 12.5%, 13.5% and 30.8%, respectively. This study presents an improved IOD model for assessing building thermal resilience, leveraging readily available climatic and building parameter data. It offers a scalable framework for supporting the design of adaptive strategies.