Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rser Vernacular and bioclimatic architecture and indoor thermal comfort implications in hot-humid climates: An overview M. Beccali a , V. Strazzeri b , M.L. Germanà b , V. Melluso b , A. Galatioto a, ⁎ a DEIM - Dipartimento dell’Energia dell’Ingegneria dell’informazione e dei Modelli matematici, Università di Palermo, Bldg 9, Italy b DARCH-Dipartimento di Architettura, Università di Palermo, Italy ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Sustainable development Vernacular architecture Natural building materials Adaptive comfort model PMVe aPMV POR method ABSTRACT Sustainable urban development, especially in disadvantaged regions, has increasingly gained a major strategic priority. New settlements and urban regeneration programs have to achieve an improvement of social life quality, promote economic growth and increase environmental protection practices and proper use of local resources. In this framework, building environment development must exploit natural resources with responsible approach by using local materials and traditional techniques. In this end, indoor comfort and energy consumption have to match the territories needs. Low energy and passive heating/cooling techniques should be considered as a valid option in many building projects. The paper reviews some models evaluating thermohygrometric comfort in natural ventilated buildings, based on adaptive approaches. A focus is given on Mozambican building traditions, and, finally it proposes a case study where, by the recovery of Mozambican old traditions, a new healthcare facility is designed to be energy autonomous also including large use of natural ventilation. 1. Introduction Today, many worldwide disadvantaged territories are enacting National measures delivering new goods and services for people and it appear clear that contrary to what has always happened in developed countries it is a new opportunity for skilled people for applying sustainable and bioclimatic principles in order to favourite proper global growth. In this line, several international experiences have highlighted the key-role of the traditional materials and techniques based on the vernacular architecture [1–5]. Indeed, it was worldwide demonstrated that the exploitation of traditional design and construction practices is capable to better guarantee indoor comfort conditions with respect to a modern building [6,7] thanks to environmental, social and cultural people background [8–11]. So that, this paper aims to discuss more recent implications between vernacular/bioclimatic principles and indoor thermal comfort models and approaches applied in hot and hot-humid climates. Finally, this research proposes a case study, located in Mozambique, where results of the reviewed adaptive models are compared. More in detail, in Section 2, an overview of on vernacular and bioclimatic architecture is showed by analysing some representative scientific studies; in Section 3 the review is focused on existing thermal comfort models on hot-humid climates for Naturally Ventilated Buildings (NVB); Section 4 describes the Mozambique context, while Section 5 concerns the case study application. Finally, in the Section 6 results of application of the previous thermal comfort models are reported and commented. 2. A brief overview on vernacular architecture, bioclimatic principles and energy saving As affirmed by Labaki and Kowaltowski [12] application of biocli- matic strategies depend on accurate climate definitions and it concerns: orientation of building in, prevailing wind assessment, wall thickness, materials and colour definition, shading conditions, roof construction, natural ventilation window and so on. Furthermore, authors consider evaporative cooling and solar heating systems as a part of bioclimatic design, since passive air-conditioning does not have energy consump- tion. As affirmed by Labaki and Kowaltowski [12] In this line Chandel et al. [13], reviewed the above mentioned aspects by focusing on building energy performances and their implications on indoor thermal comfort, also highlighting the great potential to match modern and http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.06.062 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: marco.beccali@dream.unipa.it (M. Beccali), v.strazzeri@hotmail.it (V. Strazzeri), marialuisa.germana@unipa.it (M.L. Germanà), vincenzo.melluso@unipa.it (V. Melluso), alessandra.galatioto@dream.unipa.it (A. Galatioto). Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 1364-0321/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Beccali, M., Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.06.062