Eighteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

This technical paper examines information available and nascent technologies, designs, and construction practices, including indigenous and local approaches, to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the housing and construction sector. Actions that could be taken by parties and non-party stakeholders to replicate and scale up such innovative solutions are explored. Annual temperatures are projected to continue increasing. Alarmingly, a comprehensive evaluation of weather station data shows that some coastal subtropical locations have already reported a TW of 35 °C, whereas climate models project the first 35 °C TW occurrences by the mid-twenty-first century. A TW of 35 °C marks humans’ upper physiological limit; much lower values have serious health and productivity impacts. For example, the deadly 2003 European and 2010 Russian heatwaves involved TW values no greater than 28 °C. Furthermore, extreme humid heat overall has more than doubled in frequency since 1979 (Raymond et al., 2020). As an example, highly populated regions of China and the eastern United States and tropical/subtropical urban areas in Africa and Southeast Asia including the Philippines are at risk of life-threatening humid heatwaves (Dreyfus et al., 2020). People older than 65 years increased by over 50 percent from 2014–2018. Additionally, heatwaves are expected to contribute to the loss of billions of work hours globally (Watts et al., 2020). As a result, demand and, by extension, energy demand for cooling will increase (Bradford, 2020).