Assessing the Resilience Potential of Cloisters in Historical Urban Areas in Response to Climate Change

Barbara Gherri¹, Sara Matoti^1,2, Lisa Rovetta¹

1. Università di Parma
2. Sapienza Università di Roma

Published in Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment (SASBE 2024), edited by Ali GhaffarianHoseini, Amirhosein GhaffarianHoseini, Farzad Rahimian and Mahesh Babu Purushothaman. Springer Nature, Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, volume 591, 2025, pages 338 to 348. DOI 10.1007/978-981-96-4051-5_33.

Abstract

The current debate increasingly focuses on revitalizing city centers, areas where a significant portion of the population is concentrated. It has been observed that several components of historic cities provide resilience measures against the impacts of climate change; therefore, their protection is crucial. This paper will concentrate on cloisters as examples of open and transitional spaces that are essential for mitigating the negative effects of increasingly extreme weather events within historic centers. This study aims to understand the role and thermal resilience potential of three historical urban cloisters in Italy, compared to the surrounding urban fabric, while considering both present and future scenarios. Through microclimatic assessments conducted using ENVI-met software, the thermal behavior of three case studies is assessed by calculating the absolute differences in Mean Radiant Temperature (MRT) and Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET) values. The findings indicate that cloisters with lower absolute differences in thermal stress values demonstrate a greater potential for adapting to future overheating. Despite the varying morpho-typological cloisters features, the study reveals that the shaded areas within these cloisters exhibit increased resilience to rising temperatures, highlighting their importance in urban thermal behavior.

Keywords

Session

Presented in Recorded Presentations, Session II, Friday 8 November 2024, 16:30 to 19:00, room WG 201, Auckland University of Technology. Session chair Dr Kamal Dhawan.

How to Cite

Gherri, B., Matoti, S., & Rovetta, L. (2025). Assessing the Resilience Potential of Cloisters in Historical Urban Areas in Response to Climate Change. In A. GhaffarianHoseini, A. GhaffarianHoseini, F. Rahimian, & M. B. Purushothaman (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment (SASBE 2024) (Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, Vol. 591, pp. 338–348). Springer Nature Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-4051-5_33

About the Conference

Presented at SASBE 2024, the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment, held in Auckland from 7 to 9 November 2024 and chaired by Professors Ali and Amirhosein GhaffarianHoseini, founders of GDI Academy. The version of record is published by Springer Nature; this page is the conference archive record kept by GDI Academy.