Passive building design for improving indoor thermal comfort in tropical climates: A bibliometric analysis using CiteSpace

Abstract

This paper reviews the literature on passive building design for improving indoor thermal comfort in tropical climates through a bibliometric analysis. The Web of Science database and CiteSpace were searched, and 722 articles were selected and analyzed to form the body of this article. An overview of the evolution of publications from 1984 to 2021 is first presented, followed by an examination of the co-citation networks of journals, countries, keywords, documents and authors. Co-occurrence analysis of 391 keywords, 861 highly cited publications and the top 15 most frequently mentioned publications and most salient were used to identify research methodologies and to analyze the correlation search of articles. Some notable work on thermal comfort models and passive design strategies suitable for a warm climate is also discussed. The results show that real-time field studies compared to dynamic simulations represent the most outstanding research on passive design and thermal comfort of buildings in tropical climates. In addition, standards such as ASHRAE Standard 55 and ISO Standard 7730 have played an essential role in the evolution of the subject. The results of this study may inspire other researchers and policy makers.