Incorporating climate change projections into building design: A qualitative study

The UK climate of the future cannot be predicted with certainty and this is reflected in the current UK Climate Projections (UKCP09); which are probabilistic in nature. It is anticipated that the conventional approaches to building design will not adequately represent the effects of future warming and therefore guidance is required to overcome future overheating of a building by making it thermally more comfortable. The study presented here relates to a qualitative investigation and aims to draw out the needs and references of building design professionals to develop an easy to use formulation for adequately sizing Heating; Ventilation and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) plants. It will serve as an interface between professional building services engineers and the research team working on probabilistic weather data and a building simulation package. This investigation deploys a qualitative research approach of Methodological triangulation; which refers to the use of more than one method for gathering data. Herein; the three strands of research that will be used are the questionnaire; semi structured interviews and focus groups. This work is ongoing and the analysis is due for completion in 2012. This paper focuses mainly on some of the initial findings of the qualitative approaches mentioned above for domestic buildings only.