Factsheet: Resilient Cooling (PDF 0.23MB) 
November 2019
Resilient cooling is used to denote low energy and low carbon cooling solutions that strengthen the ability of individuals, and our community as a whole to withstand, and also prevent, the thermal and other impacts of changes in global and local climates, particularly with respect to increasing ambient temperatures and the increasing frequency and severity of heat waves.

Resilient cooling of buildings to protect against heat waves and power outages: Key concepts and definition 
May 2021
Author(s): ShadyAttia, Ronnen Levinson, Eileen Ndongoa, Peter Holzer, Ongun Berk Kazanci, Shabnam Homaei, Chen Zhang, Bjarne W. Olesen, Dahai Qi, Mohamed Hamdy Per Heiselberg
Publisher: Elsevier Ltd
The concept of climate resilience has gained extensive international attention during the last few years and is now seen as the future target for building cooling design. However, before being fully implemented in building design, the concept requires a clear and consistent definition and a commonly agreed framework of key concepts. The most critical issues that should be given special attention before developing a new definition for resilient cooling of buildings are (1) the disruptions or the associated climatic shocks to protect against, (2) the scale of the built domain, (3) the timeline of resilience, (4) the events of disruption, (5) the stages of resilience, (6) the indoor climate limits and critical comfort conditions, and (7) the influencing factors of resilient cooling of buildings. This paper focuses on a scoping review of the most of the existing resilience definitions and the various approaches, found in 90 documents, towards possible resilient buildings. In conclusion, the paper suggests a definition and a set of criteria —vulnerability, resistance, robustness, and recoverability— that can help to develop intrinsic performance-driven indicators and functions of passive and active cooling solutions in buildings against two disruptors of indoor thermal environmental quality—heat waves and power outages.

Conceptualising a resilient cooling system: A socio-technical approach (PDF 0.79MB) 
April 2021
Author(s): Wendy Miller, Anaïs Machard, Emmanuel Bozonnet, Nari Yoon, Dahai Qi, Chen Zhang, Aaron Liu, Abantika Sengupta, Jan Akander, Abolfazl Hayati, Mathias Cehlin, Ongun Berk Kazanci, Ronnen Levinson
Publisher: Elsevier Ltd
Prolonged and/or extreme heat has become a natural hazard that presents a significant risk to humans and the buildings, technologies, and infrastructure on which they have previously relied on to provide cooling. This paper presents a conceptual model of a resilient cooling system centred on people, the socio-cultural-technical contexts they inhabit, and the risks posed by the temperature hazard. An integrative literature review process was used to undertake a critical and comprehensive evaluation of published research and grey literature with the objective of adding clarity and detail to the model. Two databases were used to identify risk management and natural hazard literature in multiple disciplines that represent subcomponents of community resilience (social, economic, institutional, infrastructure and environment systems). This review enabled us to characterise in more detail the nature of the temperature hazard, the functionality characteristics of a resilient cooling system, and key elements of the four subsystems: people, buildings, cooling technologies and energy infrastructure. Six key messages can be surmised from this review, providing a guide for future work in policy and practice.