Four key subtasks and two cross-cutting committees will be established to address this complex research area and these research questions. The cross-cutting committees are critical to this Network’s success. The committee members will be responsible for ensuring that diverse participation/representation and knowledge mobilization are integrated throughout all subtasks and activities, respectively, from their inception.

• Subtask 1: Individual Scale: Behavior & Well-being
• Subtask 2: Community Scale: Equity & Sufficiency
• Subtask 3: (Re)design
• Subtask 4: Operations
• Cross-cutting Committee A: Diverse Participation & Representation
• Cross-cutting Committee B: Knowledge Sharing & Best Practices

For each of these subtasks, the Network will: (1) review, develop, and/or utilize appropriate interdisciplinary methodological approaches, (2) develop new knowledge, (3) perform focused case studies, where applicable, (4) ensure representation, and (5) disseminate and transfer new methods and knowledge to key stakeholders (policymakers, researchers, building designers, technology companies). The subtasks and committees, as well as overarching descriptions, are illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Proposed cross-cutting structure with four key subtasks & two committees. To maximize interdisciplinarity and collaboration, a two-by-two subtask structure is envisioned.

The following section identifies each subtask and the committees’ scope, objectives, activities, and outcomes.

 

Subtask 1: Individual Scale: Behaviour & Well-being

Scope and objectives

This subtask explores how individual building occupants respond to extreme events and climate change, identifying underlying factors driving behavior change. It investigates trends in occupant behavior and well-being (including health and comfort) under various climate scenarios. Furthermore, it examines effective interventions and behavioral nudges for promoting sustainable behaviors and potential opportunities.

Activities

The subtask will include the following activities:

1. Analysis of recent extreme events and circumstances that led to prolonged discomfort and profound health outcomes: Recent extreme events caused by climate change include droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, floods, and extreme winter weather. This activity involves analyzing the effect of recent events on the behaviour and well-being of occupants in buildings. This includes looking at unforeseen consequences of coping measures and assessing their impact on health. Lessons learned from these events are extracted to understand how behavior influences outcomes and to inform future responses to similar situations (collaboration with Subtask 2 that focuses on community and equity aspects).
2. Understanding coping mechanisms across cultures: Given variations in climate, building traditions, system solutions, and behavioral habits, the impact of extreme events and climate change on occupant behaviour and well-being will vary across cultures and demographics. This activity aims to conduct an international survey on how occupants cope with extreme events and climate change. The result will be a better understanding of how, when, and why occupants take adaptive actions in various circumstances and opportunities for knowledge transfer between countries.
3. Evaluation of building codes and standards for future climate scenarios and extreme events: This activity investigates to what extent building codes and relevant standards already take possible behavioural change due to climate change into account. (Collaboration with Subtask 3 that focuses on building design-related aspects of climate change in codes and standards).
4. Scenario study of the effects of occupant behaviour: This activity will simulate the effect of a range of potential occupant behaviours on various aspects of building performance (energy and indoor environment quality related). This study aims to understand how behaviour influences the performance of possible climate adaptive solutions. (Collaboration with Subtask 3 that focuses on redesign options).
5. Interplay between energy transition and climate adaptation: This activity explores the extent to which occupant behavior supporting the energy transition aligns with coping mechanisms for climate change, and where conflicts arise. Occupants already face challenges understanding energy-transition-supporting behaviors, and having to navigate climate change makes this even worse. How can we assist occupants in adapting to both challenges effectively?
6. Resilient building interfaces: One way of supporting occupants to adapt to extreme events and climate could be to develop well-designed user interfaces. How can interfaces facilitate effective, time-sensitive communication of climate-related risks and guide adaptive behaviour? What are the key features of interfaces that support this? How do different demographic groups respond to various styles of interfaces? Could personalized feedback play a role and how?

Outcomes

The subtask will result in the following outcomes:

• Public guidance aimed at building occupants about appropriate adaptive behaviour during extreme events and climate change.
• Longitudinal studies on behavior changes, enabling the tracking of behavior changes and the effect of policies over time in response to climate change and extreme events.
• Quantification of benefits of climate adaptive behaviour: results of simulation studies, demonstrating the benefits of proactive adaptation measures in mitigating risks associated with climate change, e.g. insurance companies.
• Gap analysis of building codes and standards: Insight into where codes and standards pay adequate attention to climate-adaptive behaviour and where additions are needed.

Subtask 2: Community Scale: Equity & Sufficiency

Scope and objectives

This subtask aims to understand community-scale responses to climate change and how sufficiency-oriented behavior, practices, and lifestyle approaches can foster an equitable building energy transition and improve resilience, particularly in the context of changing climate. The subtask will address the issues of equity and sufficiency at the community scale.

Activities

1. Fundamental knowledge of sufficiency: This activity will identify key concepts around sufficiency in buildings and communities such as the definition, thresholds, quantification metrics, and different tiers or sufficiency levels. It will also establish the need for sufficiency in different parts of the building lifecycle, and evaluate how key stakeholders such as occupants, operators, owners, policymakers, utilities, and manufacturers, can facilitate or hinder sufficiency.
2. Quantifying sufficiency potential: Sufficiency is a contextual construct and can vary significantly depending on the population, geography, and building characteristics. This activity will explore how the conceptions of sufficiency vary by region, nation, and socio-economic strata. The activity will also explore how innovation in building technologies and design practices can enable sufficiency-oriented behaviors to improve equity in the broader community. Further, it will quantify the potential of implementing sufficiency measures (behavior and lifestyle practices and supporting technology and regulations) for decarbonizing the building stock while improving resilience.
3. Reducing inequity through sufficiency: A successful energy transition must be equitable and just for all. This activity will explore the relationship between equity, human well-being, and sufficiency. It will also evaluate the factors contributing to existing energy burden and energy poverty through case studies involving different vulnerable groups or communities and how sufficiency practices can help alleviate energy poverty and reduce inequities.
4. Policies and standards for implementing sufficiency: Sufficiency-oriented behavior and lifestyle practices are often influenced by building codes, standards, and regulatory policies. This activity will evaluate how the existing standards and codes can be adapted/changed to be in line with sufficiency. The activity will also assess whether the building design /operation performance thresholds facilitate or constraint sufficiency concepts and evaluate the associated shadow price if relaxed. The role of different stakeholders in promoting sufficiency within housing choices and decision-making will also be explored.

Outcomes

The subtask will result in the following outcomes:

• Recommendations for building codes and standards
• New knowledge and quantitative insights on sufficiency in buildings, disseminated through journal articles, white papers, and webinars to develop actionable insights on utility planning, housing policies, or building operations.
• Simulation models for building decarbonization scenario planning using sufficiency approaches
• Case studies on energy burden and energy poverty assessment.

 

Subtask 3: (Re)design

Scope and objectives

This subtask focuses on the changing involvement of stakeholders in the design and retrofitting of buildings, both at the level of individual structures and across urban areas. It covers aspects such as decision-making processes for design and retrofitting, market trends, anticipation of future climate conditions and occupant demographics, incorporating various goals into decision-making (such as indoor air quality, energy efficiency, and life cycle assessment), integrating sufficiency considerations of the building stock, and applying lessons learned to practice.

Activities

1. Occupant-Centric Building Re(design) Data Tool Box: This activity involves the creation of a data toolbox to support practitioners, researchers, and policy in making informed design decisions to enhance occupant comfort, health, and energy use patterns under varying future climate conditions. It integrates two major components: (a) Occupant archetype development for design and simulation and (b) Compilation of Design and Simulation Parameters for Future Climates.

1. Occupant archetype development for design and simulation: This activity aims to develop detailed occupant archetypes, capturing a diverse range of demographics, behaviors, and preferences for use in the design and simulation of buildings. It will investigate the specific needs and habits of different occupant types, including variations across ages, lifestyles, and health conditions.
2. Building design and simulation climate database: This activity involves synthesizing design conditions and simulation parameter data and adapting it to forms usable as inputs to common simulation software (e.g., EnergyPlus) to aid practitioners and researchers in better considering both the direct (weather changes) and indirect (demographic changes, occupant behaviours) impacts of climate change into building design and simulation. This includes adapting existing future climate data sources to the temporal and geographical scales needed for building simulation, as well as to appropriate formats for use in common software programs. It will also identify regional priorities for extreme event design in future climates (e.g., flooding, heat, etc.) to enable the consideration of these factors in design work. Leveraging the occupant archetypes developed through 1a and outputs from Subtask 1, simulation parameters will be defined to better account for changing occupant behaviors, building operation approaches, and adverse events (e.g., power loss).

2. Multi-domain simulation tool kit (practitioners, researchers, etc.): This activity focuses on creating a versatile simulation toolkit that caters to both practitioners and researchers. It will integrate various domains such as life cycle assessment (LCA), indoor environmental quality (IEQ), thermal resilience, and energy use patterns to offer a comprehensive analysis tool. 
3. Exploration of Reflective Practice Framework: This activity focuses on developing a novel Reflective Practice Framework for building design and construction practitioners, recognizing that, in most jurisdictions, no system exists that enables practitioners to learn from past design failures effectively (e.g., those uncovered by post-occupancy evaluations). Due to this lack of reflection, technical design and construction faults are repeated in subsequent projects, impacting occupant well-being and building energy use. Initially, this task will involve a review of international approaches to reflective practice, both within the buildings industry, as well as within other fields in which reflective practice is more common (e.g., medicine). Best practices for the implementation of reflective practice approaches will be identified. Through engagement with practitioners and policymakers, the benefits of reflective approaches and opportunities for their integration into policies, professional norms, or organizational policy will be shared.
4. Investigation of Human Decision-Making Strategies: In this activity, the decision-making processes employed by humans when purchasing and renting homes will be investigated. While benefits to social shifts in the types of homes purchased/rented can reduce resource consumption (e.g., “downsizing”, shifting to more multi-family buildings), little is known about how to encourage people to make different decisions. This activity will investigate what priorities people consider during their search for a home to purchase or rent, with the long-term objective of identifying leverage points that can be used to encourage more sustainable choices.
5. Multi-Domain Performance and the Performance Gap: This activity focuses on analyzing the “performance gap” across multiple domains within the building industry, addressing discrepancies between predicted and actual outcomes in areas such as energy efficiency, occupant comfort, and indoor air quality. The approach recognizes that performance gaps can manifest positively or negatively and seeks to understand the reasons why real buildings perform differently in comparison to predicted performance during the design phase. It also seeks to understand the role of the performance gap in designing for direct and indirect climate change impacts as well as the interaction/synergy/competition between different performance factors (e.g., energy, IAQ). Data from case study buildings (both field and simulation-generated) will be used to investigate these aspects and develop strategies to adjust simulation approaches to better manage ambiguity in operational patterns during design as well as to manage conflicting priorities related to occupant well-being, energy management, and cost. This includes considering how different occupant behaviors and preferences impact building performance and approaches to promoting design flexibility that accommodates a wide range of user needs and creating diversity in building load profiles to improve grid flexibility.

Outcomes

The subtask will result in the following outcomes:

• Datasets for modelling & integration into building codes: climate, occupant archetypes (researchers, practitioners, policymakers). Dissemination through ASHRAE workshops, journal papers, articles in industry magazines, and regional workshops targeted to building code committees and practitioners
• Models: integrated multi-domain model (researchers, advanced practitioners). Dissemination (same as above)
• Insights on approaches to facilitate reflective practice in the buildings industry, allowing practitioners to learn from past failures and successes. This will be disseminated through a guideline on best practices, articles in industry magazines, direct engagement with professional organizations (e.g. professional engineering/architecture associations), and industry workshops.
• Insights and new information on critical research areas, like the performance gap between predicted and actual building performance, in relation to designing for climate change impacts.  This will be disseminated through journal papers, conference presentations, etc.

Subtask 4: Operations

Scope and objectives

This subtask aims to create new insights into how the roles and behaviors of human stakeholders (such as occupants and operators) evolve during the operational phase of buildings and associated community infrastructure amidst climate change and the energy transition. It encompasses aspects including building management systems, simulating behaviors for various occupants, climates, and types of buildings.

Activities

1. Behavioral nudging and gamification: Traditionally, building operation focuses on control of indoor environments to suit humans. However, occupants can make meaningful adaptations through behaviour to improve their own comfort and building operations. This activity will explore how we can nudge occupants to adapt their behaviours in ways that can be protective during extreme events and encourage sufficiency during normal operation.
2. Human-in-the-loop control (occupant behaviors & roles): Traditional occupant-centric controls model/learn/infer occupancy and occupant behaviour and make control decisions accordingly. However, occupants are not informed by the control algorithms and have limited input to the control system. This activity will aim to address this through novel methods that include occupants in the decision-making process.
3. Econometric models (e.g., sensitivity/elasticity): People of different socioeconomic clusters may have different patterns of residential energy use. This activity will develop appliance and indoor activity models for households. Further, models will be developed to capture occupants’ responses to dynamic electricity pricing.
4. Interfaces: Controls interfaces allow humans to interact with building systems. These can be digital/high-tech or manual (e.g., windows). How these interfaces are designed impact their usability, satisfaction with the built environment, and building energy use. This activity will explore best practices for interface design and implementation particularly to help communities cope with a changing climate.
5. Enhancing the health and well-being of older adults and children during the operational phase of the building lifecycle: This activity will consider how building operations, controls, and sensing devices can better support the well-being of younger and older populations.
6. Space management and optimization for hybrid work environments: Matching indoor climate preferences of individuals and their personal schedules is a major challenge in organizations with hybrid work arrangements. This activity will develop strategies/algorithms to optimize the space management process to maximize occupant well-being and energy performance.

Outcomes

The subtask will result in the following outcomes:

• Algorithms and worked case studies demonstrating behavioural nudging and gamification strategies (controls practitioners, building operations professionals, researchers)
• Econometric models for humans' response to energy price variations (grid operators, utility planners, policymakers)
• Best practices guideline for the design and implementation of user-friendly control interfaces (controls practitioners, architects, building operations professionals, researchers)
• Best practices guideline to support the health and well-being of older adults and children in buildings (controls practitioners, architects, building operations professionals, researchers, healthcare practitioners/facilities)

In addition to the Subtasks above, we propose two cross-cutting committees to help achieve the goals of the Network in a way that is organized, systematic, and transparent: Representation Committee and the Knowledge Mobilization Committee.

 

Cross-cutting Committee A: Representation

Scope and objectives

Increase the diversity of participants in terms of geographical location of participant/organization or geographic location of study (e.g., Global South, the Caribbean, Indigenous lands); research area (e.g., behavioral economics, health, climate science, computer science); and organization type (e.g., industry, government, and non-government entities).

Activities

The priority tasks of this committee will include:

1. Map current characteristics of participants including geographic location and disciplines.
2. Encourage current existing participants to recruit new participants in the specified areas of need in general as well as for specific subtasks.
3. Create an informational package to use when recruiting new participants to indicate the scope of and typical work of the Network to increase understanding of how to join.
4. Identify meeting locations in geographic regions from which participation could be increased.
5. Facilitate invitations to potential non-academic participants to online meetings, which could make it easier for them to participate and remain engaged.

Outcomes

The subtask will result in the following outcomes:

• Broader range of humans and contexts considered and represented in the work
• Broader range of questions regarding and explanations for current and adaptive behaviors, including cultural, socioeconomic, geographical and climatic influences; broader range of venues for publications, which increases dissemination.

 

Cross-cutting Committee B: Knowledge Mobilization

Scope and objectives

This committee will develop and define internal and external communications and data-sharing protocols. Internal protocols to facilitate communication between Network participants will promote inclusivity through transparency. External protocols will ensure that key findings from the Network are communicated widely and consistently to relevant stakeholders including industry and policymakers.

Activities

The priority tasks of this committee will include:

1. Establish a standard form to track each activity listing the number, title, scope, who is involved and current status;
2. Establish a repository for journal papers and other deliverables (including code) to facilitate knowledge sharing within the Network;
3. Establish a knowledge mobilization protocol following activity completion, including guidance for creating one-page papers, social media posts (including the establishment of a Network LinkedIn profile);
4. Coordinate with the Representation Committee for knowledge dissemination to industry, government, and NGO stakeholders, using the existing contact network;
5. Track Network member participation in code and standard committees that are relevant to Network outcomes to assist with targeted knowledge mobilization to these groups; and
6. Determine relevant conferences and symposia or other non-traditional venues (e.g. podcasts) where Network research should be presented and coordinate Network participants’ submissions.

Outcomes

Outcomes from this committee will include development of white papers and guidelines for eventual integration into codes and standards as well as broad dissemination of the Network research through social media, seminars, workshops, webinars, podcasts, etc.