Earth-sheltered buildings: A review of modeling, energy conservation, daylighting, and noise aspects

Buildings constitute approximately 40% of global energy consumption and contribute to around one-third of total greenhouse gas emissions. Buried, earth-sheltered, and slope buildings leverage the ground's thermal mass to conserve heating and cooling energy. This review examines the modeling of thermal performance in earthsheltered buildings, focusing on the temperature profile of the ground and summarizing published mathematical formulations and solutions for modeling the ground temperature distribution. It encompasses considerations of both earth surface temperature measurements and the energy balance at the earth's surface. Representative ground surface boundary conditions and their parameters, including thermal conductivity, heat transfer, radiation intensity, temperature, and humidity metrics, are summarized. Efforts to model the thermal behavior and performance of earth-sheltered buildings, as well as the soil temperature at various depths, using statistical and machine learning methods, including artificial neural networks, are also documented. The review further explores energy conservation in earth-sheltered buildings, summarizing the location of studies, methodology, construction and description of buildings, and achieved energy efficiency, confirming the significant role of the ground as a thermal mass and the consequent reduction in energy requirements. Subsequently, the daylighting of earth-sheltered buildings is examined, focusing on the role of windows, the impact of daylighting on the circadian rhythm, and architectural solutions such as skylights and courtyards. A review of noise aspects considers shielding from airborne and ground-borne exterior noise sources, transmission losses, as well as ground and structure-borne noise and vibrations. Indoor acoustic environments, with measures of acoustic quality like reverberation time and speech transmission, are also discussed. Sound absorption is examined in various indoor acoustic environments, including caves, rock-cut structures, and underground buildings. Finally, health and safety issues of earth-sheltered buildings refer to ventilation, lighting, and structural safety. The review concludes with a synthesis of findings.