[insert figure for Climate-smart housing for sustainable and resilient cities]

This research focuses on developing a decision support tool for passive houses, zero energy buildings, and resilient buildings’ early design environmental and cost assessment with goal of increasing their affordability and implementation.

Passive houses use minimal amounts of energy and provide a healthy environment for their occupants; zero energy buildings reduce socio-environmental damage from energy production; resilient houses protect against disasters. However, high costs of materials, embodied energy, and environmental impacts prevent their broader implementation. An integrated optimization system will speed up the building design process by identifying the low-impact and low-cost construction materials and designs and shift building’s energy use to renewable energy to curb the growth-related emissions. Specific attributes of low-impact and low-cost designs will be identified to incentivize the transition to a low-carbon society. The use of energy from the on-site solar panels and/or energy from nearby wind farms will avoid dependency on the electric grid. The main outcome of this research is scaling-up of affordable, low carbon, and climate-resilient housing for vulnerable communities.