[IEA EBC Annex 97] Sustainable Cooling in Cities, 1st Meeting (Madrid)

Last week, the SBD Lab at the University of Liège participated in the first Expert Meeting of IEA EBC Annex 97 – Sustainable Cooling in Cities (April 23–24, Instituto de Ciencias de la Construcción Eduardo Torroja & Universidad de Navarra, Madrid), joining an international community of researchers, engineers, and policymakers working on one of the most urgent challenges in the built environment: how to cool cities sustainably, equitably, and at scale.

Cities are on the front lines of climate change. The science is not the bottleneck; implementation is. The latest evidence from Nature Cities and Nature Communications makes this unmistakably clear: nature-based solutions reduce daytime urban temperatures by 2.04°C and lower cooling loads globally, with neighborhood-scale interventions delivering the strongest thermal effects; combined mitigation strategies can cut heat danger hours by 37% in temperate mid-latitude cities; and yet the benefits of urban cooling remain deeply unequal, concentrated where governance and investment allow, not where heat vulnerability is highest. Four subtasks covering fundamentals, simulation and assessment methods, cooling solutions, and policy dissemination generated sharp technical exchanges on urban heat mitigation, heat stress indicators, urban cooling networks and infrastructure, energy grid coupling, experimental monitoring, and actionable implementation pathways for municipalities. The message from Madrid was consistent: the tools exist, the evidence is robust, what cities still lack is the governance capacity and financing structures to deploy cooling infrastructure at scale.

SBD Lab contributed to three sections of the Annex 97 State-of-the-Art Review (SOTAR): experimental monitoring methods for urban microclimate and building thermal performance (Section 3.2); resilient cooling system integration under heatwave conditions and coupling with energy grid performance (Section 4.20); and a Belgium national case study on how Brussels is translating climate ambition into governance frameworks and cooling interventions; and where measurable performance gaps remain (Section 5.2.2). These contributions are directly grounded in the ongoing PhD research of Tianyi Wang, whose work on multi-scale urban heat island dynamics and overheating in Belgium's residential building stock provides the empirical foundation, detection methodology, and nature-based mitigation framework, from urban greening and cool surfaces to vegetation-integrated cooling strategies and urban cooling networks; linking fine-grained thermal monitoring at the building level to city-scale action for Belgian cities. SBD Lab is pleased to have Cristian Andres Mejía Parada as a participating PhD researcher in Annex 97, representing Belgium and contributing to a Spain case study with Prof. Oriol Pons Valladares, bringing a valuable cross-national perspective on how Southern European cities are addressing systemic cooling challenges.

This is not isolated work. It builds on SBD Lab's sustained engagement within IEA EBC Annex 80 – Resilient Cooling of Buildings, now scaled from the building to the city. It reflects a deliberate research trajectory: from monitoring to modelling, from building performance to urban governance, and from Belgian cities to international policy. The future of sustainable urban cooling is being written now, and SBD Lab is among those holding the pen.

This builds on SBD Lab's work within 'IEA EBC Annex 80', now scaled from building to city. Thank you to Operating Agents Peter Holzer and Philipp Stern at IBR&I. Next meeting will be in the Cork, Ireland, 29-30th Oct 2026 . Thanks to Aurora Monge Barrio from the University of Navarra, Spain, and Agnese Salvati and the Spanish team for hosting this great meeting.

📚 Learn more about Annex 97 https://annex97.iea-ebc.org/

📚 Learn more about our research https://www.sbd.uliege.be/

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