“A multi-objective optimization framework for analyzing thermal resilience under power outage and varying climatic conditions,” by PhD student Ahmad Shoaib Amiri has been published in the Energy Conversion and Management (Volume 351, 2026). 

The paper was co-authored with Michael Jemtrud, an associate professor and Chair in Architecture, Energy, and Environment at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture, McGill University and Amiri’s Daniels faculty PhD supervisor, Associate Professor Daniel Chung. 

Abstract: 

As extreme weather events are becoming more severe and frequent, there is a growing risk to occupants’ health and well-being, which requires investigating and improving thermal resilience. To address the limitations of the current methods for quantifying passive survivability, this study applies a novel methodology that integrates building energy simulation, multi-objective optimization, and thermal resilience under extreme climatic conditions and power outage scenarios. The method was applied to a case study building located in Montreal, Canada, to evaluate how six design variables—orientation, thermal mass, solar absorptance, glazing U-value, glazing solar transmittance, and overhang shading influence thermal resilience, energy consumption, and thermal comfort across historic and projected climates. Mathematical models were developed to correlate the variables to summer and winter passive survivability. The research determined that for the studied scenarios, solar absorptance is the design variable with the highest impact on passive survivability, followed by thermal mass and glazing transmittance. The results show that the optimized envelope configurations increased the summer passive survivability of the Gym up to 17 h, compared to 6 h in winter, highlighting strong seasonal asymmetry. Pareto-optimal solutions achieving maximum summer survivability exhibited whole-building EUI values between 99–105 kWh/m2 and discomfort ranging from 656–794 h.

Amiri’s research focuses on the critical issue of building energy consumption in light of climate change and global energy scarcity. By integrating future weather scenarios and modelling tools, Amiri strives to assess, model and enhance the resiliency of building enclosures, paving the way for a more sustainable future. Leveraging the energy modeling tools, his research aims at exploring various building energy retrofit solutions, particularly under ReCONstruct: Building Energy Retrofit Solutions for Canada.