[PhD Defense] Dr. Ramin Rahif, Impact of Climate Change on High-Performance Belgian Houses

Congrats to Dr. Ramin Rahif for an excellent dissertation. The Ph.D. was defended on Friday, 15th of September 2023, at 10:00 in B37 Auditorium 02 at Liège University, Belgium. Dr. Rahif demonstrated significant skill in using building performance simulation techniques to estimate the impact of climate change on thermal comfort in residential buildings until the end of the century.

✅ Do you know that temperate oceanic Belgium is one of the most at-risk countries in the world for high-impact heatwaves?

Therefore, this Ph.D. research forecasts the impact of climate change on Belgian high-performance houses and provides information on if and which adaptation measures are needed. This dissertation is an article-based Ph.D., and Dr. Rahif published more than five key papers were published as part of his Ph.D.

Dissertation Abstract:  This study is developed to project the effect of such warming weather conditions on Belgian high-performance houses and provide an idea of mitigation strategies. A comprehensive simulation-based methodological framework is introduced to assess and compare the resistivity of buildings and their cooling strategies to the overheating impact of climate change. Some of the key findings of this study are (i) current building policies and regulations in the region fail to quantify overheating in the context of climate change accurately, (ii) a heating-dominated region like Belgium is expected to become a cooling-dominated one by the end of the century, (iii) replacement of traditional HVAC systems with more efficient ones is essential, (iv) passive cooling design strategies, are highly effective in achieving comfort and energy efficiency benefits, and (v) the use of active cooling systems to deal with more severe heatwaves will become inexorable in the coming decades.

The Ph.D. can be downloaded for free. https://lnkd.in/e44ewhQb
Check Dr. Rahif's other publications.https://https://lnkd.in/eBXwnBBY

A big and warm thanks to the jury members, Jonathan Wright, Brice Tréméac, @Philippe Andre, Anne-Claude Romain, and Vincent Lemort for their time and dedication in reviewing this 4 years exciting project. All the best for Dr. Rahif's future career.

The Walloon Region funded this Ph.D. under the call ’Actions de Recherche Concertées 2019 (ARC)’ (funding number: ARC 19/23-05). The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Walloon Region and the University of Liege for funding. This study is a part of the OccuPant Project and International Energy Agency (IEA) EBC Annex 80 – ‘‘Resilient cooling of buildings” project activities to define resilient cooling in residential buildings.

Subscribe to my mailing list: www.shadyattia.org

Look at ☑️ recent posts and activities. https://lnkd.in/eR-jiXtR

#overheating #extremeclimate #heatwaves #thermalcomfort  #resilience #failure #thermalshocks #architecture #buildingdesign