Paper Conference

Proceedings of SimBuild Conference 2012: 5th conference of IBPSA USA

     

Prediction of the Urban Heat Island Effect to Be Used in Building Energy Analyses

Bruno Bueno, Leslie Norford, Julia Hidalgo, Grégoire Pigeon
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA
CNRM-GAME, Met´ eo France and CNRS, Toulouse, France

Abstract: The increase in air temperature produced by urbanization, a phenomenon known as the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, is often neglected in current building energy simulation practices. The UHI effect can have an impact on the energy consumption of buildings, especially those with low internal heat gains or with an inherent close interaction with the outdoor environment (e.g. naturally-ventilated buildings). This paper presents an Urban Weather Generator (UWG) to calculate air temperatures inside urban canyons from measurements at an operational weather station located in an open area outside a city. The model is evaluated against field data from Basel (Switzerland) and Toulouse (France). The expected error of UWG predictions is about 1 K, which stays within the range of air temperature variability observed in different locations of the same urban area.
Pages: 236 - 245
Paper:
simbuild2012_04b_1_Bueno