A stock-level framework for climate resilience assessment of regional educational building stock
Miquel Casals, Juan José Medina-Musellas, Nicolás Carrasco-Astudillo, and 2 more authors
Energy and Buildings, Sep 2026
Educational building stock Climate resilience Climate change overheating resistivity Annual energy demand Representative concentration pathways
This study proposes and applies a stock-level assessment framework to evaluate the climate resilience of the educational building stock in Catalonia, Spain, under present, mid-term (2060), and long-term (2100) climate conditions across optimistic (RCP 2.6), neutral (RCP 4.5), and pessimistic (RCP 8.5) scenarios. The analysis reveals key findings with direct implications for climate adaptation policy. First, climate resilience exhibits strong heterogeneity across the regional educational building stock, driven by differences in construction period, envelope insulation, geometry, and climate zone. Second, only 38% of the stock, constructed under modern regulations, demonstrates sufficient resilience to future climate conditions, while the remaining 62% shows varying degrees of vulnerability. Third, although annual cooling demand is expected to double after 2060, total annual energy demand may remain stable or even slightly decline by 2100 due to offsetting reductions in heating demand, particularly under the stringent RCP 2.6 emission pathway. The novelty of our approach lies in the proposal of a comprehensive and systematic building resilience assessment framework integrating K-means++ clustering for representative building identification with recently proposed indicators specifically designed to assess building climate resilience. This assessment framework provides an effective and timely solution to support local policymakers in developing climate adaptation strategies and building retrofit decisions at the regional scale.
