Climate Change and Health Conditions in a Social House Building in Trieste

In this paper we present a study concerning the effect of external high tem-peratures on interior living conditions in a social housing building. The con-struction, located in Trieste, is characterized by uninsulated walls and low performance windows. However, since the building is under refurbishment, simulations also considered the effect of new improved thermal characteris-tics. People health was considered through the application of a biophysical model, and the use of electrical ventilators as a mitigation strategy was also included. The building model has been developed using DesignBuider code and the simulation were performed with EnergyPlus software. The model has been validated using internal temperatures measured during hot summer weeks in 2024. Three external conditions for simulations were used, a cur-rent reference year obtained using a local weather station data and two future weather data obtained from GCM-RCM projections to highlight the effects of possible future more severe conditions. The results show that the internal en-vironment during a hot period can become dangerous for the people and can lead to heat stress conditions with values of skin wettedness nearing and sur-passing the limit of 0.7 especially for future weather conditions. However, the use of ventilators can provide mitigation reducing skin wettedness below values of 0.5. As an alternative the use of an air conditioning system guaran-teeing comfort conditions was assessed but the simulations highlighted that future temperatures could led to an increase of cooling energy up to19 %.