Fergus Nicol is an award winning leader in the field of adaptive thermal comfort, having started as a physicist at the Building Research Establishment in the 1960s. He moved on to work with the UK Medical Research Council, and into teaching, before leaving both to start the radical book shop Bookmarks. Returning to research in 1992, he is now an Emeritus Professor in a number of universities, and a top cited scholar across his many publications. He led influential pan-European and Pakistan studies on comfort and he leads the NCEUB, Network for Comfort and Energy use in Buildings. He co-founded and ran the Windsor Conferences on comfort and is internationally respected for his support of fellow researchers and students. Hom Bahadur Rijal is an award winning researcher, author and Professor at Tokyo City University, Japan, specialising in adaptive thermal comfort and occupant behaviour within buildings having published over 80 journal papers, 12 book chapters and co-edited books. Growing up in a remote village in Nepal where he remains a valued social activist, he studied higher education in Japan and worked in England. He is currently embarked on a Japan-wide project to establish the adaptive thermal comfort limits for major cities across Japan. In 2005 he received the Encouragement Prize for a distinguished article from the Architectural Institute of Japan. Susan Roaf is Emeritus Professor of Architectural Engineering at Heriot Watt University. Raised in Malaysia and the Australian bush, and educated in Britain, she has lived and worked as an architect, anthropologist and archaeologist in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, California and Antarctica, experiences that colour her unique understanding of buildings and comfort in different climates and cultures and inspired her work on adapting buildings and cities to a heating world. She pioneered UK building integrated solar technologies and eco-design, and with Nicol and Humphreys has promoted adaptive thermal comfort globally. Her expertise in ancient technologies informed some of her 23 books and other publications, all aimed at understanding building performance in the past, present and future.
""The comprehensive body of research that the editors have complied in the Handbook of Resilient Thermal Comfort collectively provides a wealth of constructive insights and lessons for the design of more resilient buildings. It justifies the importance of supporting greater inhabitant agency. Although these represent the central focus, this volume points to a much broader perspective on the roles and responsibilities of building design professionals and therefore provides them with a valuable resource. As a handbook, they may selectively review those chapters of more direct relevance to their interests. The electronic version, and its attendant search capability, is particularly useful for this."" - Ray Cole, Professor University of British Columbia, Canada, reviewing in Buildings & Cities ""This is a very rich and engaging monograph on resilient comfort, which integrates the research achievement of researchers from many countries over a long period of time and is what makes it so valuable. I would highly recommend this book to Chinese researchers and students studying adaptive thermal comfort."" – Yingxin Zhu, Professor Tsinghua University, China ""In an age of climate change, we need to re-examine how we build. Resilient Comfort will add immeasurably to our understanding of how to design for safe conditions in buildings during temperature extremes and power outages."" – Alex Wilson, Resilient Design Institute, New York, USA ""The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to consider the airborne transmission of viruses as never before. Ventilation of enclosed spaces must be revolutionised - dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Just when most needed, this book highlights the nuances of indoor ventilation, balanced against thermal comfort, energy costs and building resilience."" – Stephanie Dancer, Consultant Microbiologist, Lanarkshire, Scotland ""I am confident that this book will provide a vital contribution to the development of a carbon neutral society, and provide new thinking about healthier building design after the COVID-19 crisis. The philosophy of this book is that ‘Human Adaptive Behaviour’ will help to solve these problems."" – Shin-Ichi Tanabe, President of the Architectural Institute of Japan ""There is a wealth of knowledge in these pages! More vast than a single conference proceeding, this is an impressive compilation of global voices sharing their collective research wisdom spanning yurts to high-tech offices, passive to active systems, and offering valuable lessons learned for more resilient building design and policy."" – Gail Brager, University of California, Berkeley, USA ""In a research domain crowded with countless engineering and architecture meetings each year, the Windsor Comfort Conferences were unique in their positioning of the occupant at the very centre of the built environment. Unfortunately, the grand finale of that celebrated series was abruptly cancelled when the UK Prime Minister officially declared the COVID-19 pandemic, literally just days before the opening speeches were scheduled in Windsor in April 2020. This volume contains a distillation of the latest occupant-centric comfort research from around the world. With established thought leaders and young research innovators alike, the volume’s list of contributors represents a veritable who’s who of thermal comfort researchers at a point in history when the subject of their enquiries is more significant and consequential than ever before."" – Richard de Dear, University of Sydney, Australia ""The great Samuel Johnson once said 'to be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends.' In my experience that requires being neither too hot nor too cold, and this book is full of thoughts on how to accomplish that while simultaneously keeping the planet from overheating. It's of great value!"" – Bill McKibben, Founder of the Climate Campaign Group 350.org