AI-Enabled Emerging Technologies for High-Performance Building Benchmarking: Balance Energy, Comfort, and Health Resilience

As climate change intensifies, heatwaves, wildfires, and other extreme climate events are pushing our buildings beyond their limits. Traditional high-performance buildings (HPBs) have primarily focused on reducing energy use and carbon emissions; however, these goals alone are no longer sufficient to achieve a sustainable future. Occupant comfort and health are now critical dimensions of climate resilience that should be integrated into the design, operation, and evaluation of buildings. Because buildings are the fundamental units of cities, leveraging AI-enabled building performance benchmarking can support climate resilience by identifying vulnerabilities, prioritizing interventions, and protecting occupant health during extreme events. This chapter provides an accessible overview of how emerging technologies, specifically artificial intelligence (AI), can support more holistic strategies for benchmarking buildings that encompass both energy-efficient and health-protective approaches. We reviewed recent advances in energy benchmarking techniques that use machine learning (ML) to estimate building energy use and identify occupant comfort. These tools can not only measure energy use in buildings but also assess how well they serve the people inside them, even during times of stress. The chapter examines key performance indicators that extend beyond traditional energy metrics, such as total energy consumption and energy use intensity (EUI). New indicators—such as indoor overheating, air quality, and thermal autonomy—help evaluate how long a building can remain safe during power outages or heatwaves. The scalable solutions will be discussed in relation to AI-enabled emerging technologies for climate resilience in HPBs, ranging from single buildings to urban scales. Equity for health is a key consideration, as not all communities have the same resources or vulnerabilities. By integrating social and health data with building performance analysis, designers, building managers, and policymakers can make more inclusive and climate-ready decisions. Throughout the chapter, we draw on recent research, conferences, and real-world projects to demonstrate how AI-enabled tools can support better design choices to reduce energy consumption and enhance occupant comfort and health.