Holistic overview of natural ventilation and mixed mode in built environment of warm climate zones and hot seasons

Abstract

The climate change leads to periods of extreme events (i.e. reduction of cold seasons, heat waves, overheating, urban heat island among others) that affect the performance of residential and tertiary buildings with high occupancy (i.e. hospitals, schools, commercial centres, offices etc). However, most of low-carbon policies do not consider the ventilation as a mitigation measure. In fact, a lack of studies on natural ventilation (NV) and mixed-mode (MM) strategies was detected, especially for warm regions or areas with hot and humid climates. This paper aims to carry out a bibliometric analysis from 1928 to 2023, to observe the evolution of the topic. After identifying the main research clusters (thermal comfort, energy efficiency, indoor air quality and simulation tools) by science mapping, the most relevant publications of the last 20 years were assessed (2003–2023). The results of this study revealed that only 1.51 % of the scientific documents in 95 years corresponded to an extensive literature review, although epidemic or disease outbreaks led to peaks of production in this topic. This emphasizes the importance of observing what was done and how was implemented over the years. Regarding the clusters, some relevant aspects can be highlighted: (i) non-homogeneity of studies on NV or MM related to building type; (ii) interregional projects should be drawn up to check the effectiveness of NV and MM, especially when other architectural techniques are adopted (i.e. solar chimneys, window wall ratio –WWR-, thermally activated building structures –TABS- etc); (iii) the optimization of simulation tools should be based on the incorporation of BIM and generative design for NV and MM.