Passive natural ventilation strategies in hot and humid climates
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In hot and humid climates, the growing demand for cooling has reinforced dependence on air conditioning; this paper summarizes passive natural ventilation strategies to reduce energy consumption and improve indoor air quality. An exploratory literature review was conducted using a search and screening protocol in academic sources, including peer-reviewed studies in tropical areas with evidence from measurements, simulations, or aerodynamic tests, and a thematic synthesis by families of solutions. The results identify cross ventilation as the most effective regime for achieving high renewal rates and perceptible indoor velocities when porosity, inflow-outflow balance, orientation, floor depth, and internal trajectories minimize losses; in contrast, single-sided ventilation performs more erratically and is heavily dependent on turbulence and urban obstructions. In scenarios of extreme heat or degraded outdoor air, exclusively natural ventilation is often insufficient, so combinations with passive capture or extraction devices and very low-consumption supports, operated contextually, are proposed. It is concluded that success depends on multiscale morphological decisions and adaptive operation based on air movement.
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