A review on effect of overheating in dwellings on human health

In recent years, heat waves with other human-made health stressors have caused some negative impacts on human health, even resulting in some deaths [1]. The vulnerable populations, such as low-income families, children, the elderly, the homeless, are most susceptible to the health effects of overheating. Therefore, the issue on the effect of overheating on human health has drawn much attention from various research and design fields in recent years. However, the available knowledge is not yet systematically organized in terms of topics, approaches, and solutions. This paper reviews articles in the last ten years on overheating in residential buildings to understand the current research state and emerging efforts made by the domain and explore potential future research directions as well. All the literatures were reviewed according to four categories: research topic, research method, reported result, and solution / strategy. Through analysis of these studies, several features were identified in the study of residential overheating. This study aims to make some contributions to the topic of overheating and provide research suggestions and associated design strategies to the domain of architecture.