Investigating urban-scale building thermal resilience under compound heat waves and power outage events based on urban morphology analysis

Within the complex context of global warming, compound heat waves and power outage events are frequently observed. Building thermal resilience is a crucial criterion for evaluating building performance under extreme conditions. However, most studies primarily focused on individual buildings, often neglecting the broader macro perspectives and urban heat island effects. To address these gaps, this study proposes an effective evaluation framework for assessing building thermal resilience. At the individual building scale, this framework incorporates both microclimate conditions and building properties through simulations that integrate the combining the urban weather generator model and urban building energy model. At the city-wide scale, it integrates datasets of urban morphology, building information, and weather files, and then construct an urban knowledge graph to facilitate information interaction for massive simulations. Subsequently, the framework integrates building performance indicators and visualizes them on maps to reveal distribution patterns and vulnerable areas, allowing for targeted strategies to enhance urban thermal resilience and prepare residents for unexpected crises. The framework was demonstrated by simulating indoor environments for 214,554 residential buildings during the power outage in Phoenix. The results reveal that traditional methods that ignored microclimates, overestimated building thermal performance by 13 %. Additionally, building thermal resilience varied significantly across the city, with some indicators differing by up to 645 %. This study underscores the significance of microclimates and introduces a novel framework for evaluating building thermal resilience from both micro and macro perspectives. It provides practical recommendations for urban heat adaptation, encompassing home retrofits, resource allocation, service enhancements, and infrastructure upgrades.