Success criteria for building modelling and performance¶
The ARC Cool Buildings Standard aims for all-year-round thermal comfort in hot and hot-humid climates, principally through passive design, while mitigating dangerous conditions during heatwaves.
ARC recognises the need for the ruggedisation of strategies and as-built solutions, in order to help build resilience into communities preparing for the social, economic and environmental challenges created by a rapidly changing climate, with limited resources.
What the standard aims at¶
The ARC Cool Buildings Standard success criteria are focused on achieving - principally through passive design and resilient, robust features - all year-round thermal comfort in hot, and hot and humid, climates, whilst mitigating dangerous conditions during heatwaves.
Alongside this, ARC considers how to:
- achieve good indoor air quality through practical ventilation strategies and measures
- minimise operational and embodied energy consumption, peak power demand, capital and running costs, and lifetime carbon emissions.
How performance is judged¶
ARC gauges building performance using the humidity-modified adaptive comfort model described in the comfort model. Environmental condition data from monitoring buildings is used to investigate whether thermal comfort has been achieved in the whole building, parts of the building, or even individual rooms - and whether designated areas can operate safely as a heat refuge during extreme heatwaves.
Results are relevant to each specific climate category, based on the Köppen–Geiger climate classification. The ARC website provides a global map of the climate regions, as well as locating useful projects and people.
The specific thresholds are set out in success criteria.
What ARC guidance is for¶
The guidance promotes building design and specifications that result in performance more likely to be maintained over the longer term, factoring in rapidly changing climates.
It helps establish and articulate, for building owners, clearer building management, investment and improvement pathways, whilst anticipating increasingly extreme weather events including disruption to electricity supplies - focusing specifically on heat and humidity inside buildings.
ARC considers more realistic socio-economic contexts and scenarios, which for new and existing buildings tend to favour smaller, phased building investment and measures. Typically this means incremental, room-by-room improvements over time - as required, and when finances allow. The overall aim is to collaborate to develop solutions for uptake at 'pace and scale'.
This is supported by:
- educational material promoting understanding of building science, specifically for hot, cooling-dominated climates
- a practical 'pattern language' library, sharing co-created design solutions
- shared exemplar projects, to inspire and inform.
See the Cool Buildings Programme for how these fit together.
Source: ARC Technical Criteria - ARC Protocols for Cool Buildings - Success criteria
Overview · confidence high · Imported 2026-08-29, not yet reviewed · next review 2026-11-29
Tags: standard, criteria, passive-design, overview
Citation key: cool-buildings-standard