Climate-resilient Modular Design for Indigenous Housing

在加拿大北部，土著社区正面临着许多与住房有关的挑战，其中包括可用房屋短缺、运输建筑材料的高成本、难以找到工人、使用不充分的建筑材料和系统，无法抵抗恶劣的气候，以及施工季节短。气候变化使这些问题进一步复杂化，因为加拿大北部受到气候变化影响的速度是全球的三倍，气候变化导致了更强的风和更冷的温度。因此，迫切需要一种符合规范的结构解决方案，以确保重量轻，尺寸小，适合运输到偏远地区，提供足够的风致侧向载荷阻力和对极冷温度的绝缘，可以快速部署以适应短施工季节，并使用经济实惠的建筑材料和系统。拟议的研究将利用“模块化建造”技术开发一种适应气候变化的解决方案，该技术能够生产大量质量更高、施工速度更快、成本更低的组件，与传统方法相比，在施工和运输过程中产生的废物和碳排放更少。模块化设计将进行定制和优化，以适应加拿大北部的建筑限制。本研究的目标是：(1)对加拿大北部进行适当的气候危害表征，(2)检查不同的结构系统和材料性能以抵抗恶劣气候，以及(3)优化模块化设计以提高气候抗性及其可承受性。这些目标将通过利用风洞测试和高保真计算流体动力学模型来精确量化风对模块化结构的影响来实现。结构和热性能将评估不同的结构系统和材料使用实验测试，冷室和有限元分析。最后，将对模块化设计进行优化，以获得性能最佳的替代方案，同时提高风和热性能，同时降低成本。该方案的新颖之处在于，它能够通过实验验证的数值模型准确模拟模块化房屋的空气动力学和结构性能，并将这些模型与最先进的优化和基于人工智能的回归技术相结合。这项研究的结果不仅将提高加拿大北部建筑环境的气候适应性，而且还将促进和鼓励未来与风能、模块化结构、土著住房和多灾害风险相关的研究。此外，通过这项研究产生的知识将鼓励在加拿大北部进行投资，并将努力减少许多与住房有关的对土著人民的社会经济影响。

In Northern Canada, Indigenous communities are experiencing many housing-related challenges, which include the shortage of available houses, the high cost of transporting construction materials, the difficulty to find workers, the use of inadequate construction materials and systems that can not resist the severe climate, and the short construction season. These problems are further compounded by climate change, which induces stronger wind and colder temperatures since Northern Canada is getting affected by climate change at three times the global rate. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a code-compliant structural solution, which ensures being lightweight and small in size to be suitable for transportation to remote areas, provides an adequate wind-induced lateral load resistance and insulation against extremely cold temperatures, can be rapidly deployed to suit the short construction season, and uses affordable construction materials and systems. The proposed research will develop a climate-resilient solution using the "Modular Construction" technique, which is capable of producing a large number of components with higher quality, faster construction, and lower cost, along with producing less waste and carbon emissions in construction and transportation compared to conventional methods. The modular design will be tailored and optimized to fit the construction limitations in Northern Canada. The objectives of this research are to (1) perform proper climate hazard characterization for Northern Canada, (2) examine different structural systems and materials performance to resist severe climate, and (3) optimize the modular design to improve the climate resistance and its affordability. These objectives will be achieved by utilizing wind tunnel testing and high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics models to accurately quantify the wind impact on modular structures. Structural and thermal performances will be assessed for different structural systems and materials using experimental testing, cold chamber and finite element analysis. Finally, the modular design will be optimized to obtain the best performing alternatives that can simultaneously enhance the wind and thermal performances while reducing the cost. The novelty of the proposed program lies in its ability to accurately simulate the aerodynamic and structural performances of modular houses through experimentally validated numerical models and integrating these models with state-of-the-art optimization and AI-based regression techniques. The outcome of this research will not only improve the climate resiliency of the built environment in Northern Canada, but will also enable and encourage future research related to wind energy, modular structures, Indigenous housing, and multi-hazard risk. In addition, knowledge generated through this research will encourage investments in Northern Canada and will work to reduce many housing-related socioeconomic impacts on Indigenous people.