Adaptation Strategies of Residential Buildings Based on a Health Risk Evaluation—A Case Study of Townhouses in Taiwan

Abstract

Global warming increases the probability of extreme events and heat waves triggering severe impacts on human health, especially the elderly. Taiwan is an aged society, so residential buildings, which cannot withstand extreme temperature events, increase the risk of harm for the elderly. Furthermore, Taiwanese prefer to open the windows to reduce indoor high temperatures, which causes high levels of outdoor PM2.5 to flow indoors, leading to health risks. Therefore, this research proposes a strategy to create a house with a low temperature and a low PM2.5 health risk for the elderly based on building envelope renovation and windows user behavior patterns. The risk day is demonstrated as an index to evaluate the indoor environment quality, which is based on the number of days that exceed the health risk threshold. The results show that the performance improvement of the building envelope and control of the window opening timing can effectively reduce the risk days by 48.5%. This means that passive strategies cannot fully control health risks, and the use of equipment is necessary. Finally, if the current situation is maintained without any adjustment or strategy improvement, an additional 41.3% energy consumption must be paid every year to control health risks.