Climate change and the built environment - a systematic review

Abstract

Recent intergovernmental panel on climate change reports have once again emphasised the effective measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the importance of the built environment. Historically, passive and active solutions are known for their potential to make the built environment more environmentally friendly. Recently, a significant number of studies covered the effectiveness of such solutions under distinct current and different future climate and emission predictions. Through the PRISMA framework, this paper presents a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of such studies within the last 10 years (2013–2023) to understand their impact, their tangible applications, and their empirical evidence. Local ecosystems, weather patterns, geographical and cultural challenges dictate the solutions for a warmer future. Among the solutions, as expected, passive solutions remain most effective even though a combination with active ones is necessary regardless of the context. The review in this paper is expandable beyond the effective reported solutions and it highlights the most effective solutions under different climate zones.