Abstract :
[en] Abstract
Climate change is intensifying overheating risks in cities, where the Urban Heat Island effect and increasingly severe recent heatwaves are driving up thermal stress, cooling demand, and outdoor discomfort. Shading is among the most effective passive strategies for reducing solar-radiative exposure, yet research on shading systems remains fragmented across building and urban scales, climatic contexts, and performance indicators, limiting comparability across studies. This paper develops a multiscale, cross-climate KPI framework for assessing shading systems for overheating resilience. Based on a PRISMA-based review of 90 publications, the framework draws on the IPCC climate-risk and vulnerability literature and develops an operationalisation of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity tailored to shading-related overheating resilience. It proposes a multidimensional classification of shading systems by application scale, physical mechanism, and temporal behaviour, and a harmonised KPI set that distinguishes climate-invariant definitions from climate-sensitive assessments requiring local calibration. The framework is then applied to a structured database of 46 case studies, showing that most indicators are stable in formal definition but not in interpretation—several units required climate-dependent calibration. Recurring associations emerge between physical mechanism, application scale, and climatic context, while tropical and continental climates and morphological self-shading remain markedly under-represented in the current evidence base. The framework does not rank shading solutions or validate performance outcomes; rather, it offers a structured methodological basis for selecting, interpreting, and calibrating KPIs in future empirical and simulation-based research on climate-resilient shading.
