Passive cooling for public buildings - guidance for humanitarian practitioners

With climate change driving a forecasted 8-fold increase in heatwaves by the 2030s, the document helps humanitarian managers incorporate low-cost cooling solutions into public buildings used in crisis responses — primarily health centres, schools, and child-friendly spaces. It is written in non-technical language for non-specialists, covering both temporary structures and permanent buildings across tropical and hot-dry climate zones, and is based on peer-reviewed literature field-tested in Mali and the Central African Republic.

The guide walks through a comprehensive range of passive cooling strategies — meaning solutions that work without energy-dependent mechanical systems. These include using high heat-storage building materials, natural ventilation approaches (wind-driven, stack, courtyard, and wing wall designs), cool painting, roof shading, vegetation, window and wall shading, insulation, and building form and zoning. It also briefly covers low-cost active and evaporative cooling. Crucially, strategies are tailored by climate type (dry vs. humid), covering both new builds and retrofits of existing buildings, with annexes comparing the effectiveness of different approaches across multiple studies.