Exploring the role of building codes in protecting occupants from overheating—A Canadian perspective
Bibliographic record
Abstract
• Overheating metrics and thresholds in building codes need to be linked to health. • Current recommendations are limited by existing knowledge, tools, and practices. • Establishing national guidance on using future climate data for design is critical. • Passive measures are essential to lessen the resource burdens of active cooling. • Flexible compliance paths address varied project resources and risk thresholds. Extreme heat events are becoming more frequent and more severe as climate change continues to progress. This poses significant risks to human health and safety. These impacts highlight the urgent need to address overheating resilience in residential buildings, where heat-related injuries notably occur. Historically, building codes have been essential in protecting occupants against environmental hazards, but integrating provisions to reduce overheating remains a global challenge. Overcoming stakeholder disagreements, changing entrenched design practices, and developing practical assessment methodologies are key barriers to progress. By compiling the most recent findings and research on overheating resilience, with an emphasis on residential buildings, this article seeks to advance the discourse about incorporating overheating protection in national building codes. This paper examines physiological thresholds for overheating, practical metrics for assessment, and strategies for aligning building code priorities with health and equity considerations. The complexities of balancing energy efficiency with overheating protection (particularly for heating-dominated climates) are also covered. Drawing on these insights, a framework of priority actions is proposed to guide the development of national building codes, ensuring they evolve to meet the challenges of a warming climate. This article discusses possible approaches to include overheating resilience in building codes for residential buildings through a Canadian case study, using the National Building Code of Canada. The findings are intended to serve as a foundational reference for jurisdictions worldwide seeking to enhance overheating protections in their regulatory frameworks.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.017 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".