outdoor microclimate

The regenerative approach to design goes beyond limiting the environmental impact of the built environment and towards the enrichment of the ecosystem, adaptation to climate change, and the improvement of human health. This concept is being applied to buildings through new standards such as the Living Building Challenge, yet examples of implementation of regenerative design at the urban scale are rare. While this is a promising direction for sustainable design, in theory new metrics, design tools and workflows need to be developed to translate regenerative design concepts into practice effectively. Among other factors, barriers to implementation remain rooted in the shortcomings of existing urban simulation tools to evaluate a wide range of performance metrics simultaneously. This paper thus proposes a prototype workflow to evaluate regenerative performance using existing evaluation tools in a single digital workflow. A series of existing and customised plugins, most of which are already in use and open source, were integrated into a multi-parametric workflow based on the Grasshopper visual programming tool. The workflow was tested on Malaga as a case study and incorporated key performance indicators related to outdoor human thermal comfort, biophilia, daylight performance, and energy use and production, based on data exchange and synergies across the different tools. These indicators were evaluated for present and future climate scenarios obtained from a weather generator. This paper demonstrates the potential of this workflow to receive visual feedback on various aspects of regenerative urban design, thus enabling designers to more effectively pursue an evidence-based urban design process.

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The research aims at assessing the sensitivity of the Urban Weather Generator v4.1 to the application of different mitigation strategies for the urban heat island under two climatic contexts: desert climate (Mendoza city) and tropical climate (Campinas city). Twenty-four scenarios that modify their morphologic and material parameters were simulated. The results showed that the temperature of the air predicted by the UWG model is not significantly sensitive to the changes produced by the application of different strategies in urban contexts of equal H/W aspect; however, it does show sensitivity to the variation of the H/W aspect (ΔTa ≤ 1.3°C) and the climate context. The highest performance of the UWG model was recorded on the surface temperatures of the urban envelope, with a maximum difference in surface temperature was recorded on high aspect ratio with high albedo in arid climate, (Ts of roof = 28°C).

The climatic conditions characterizing the troposphere affect the outdoor activities of the population which, in turn, characterize the anthroposphere. Over the past years recent studies examined a possible analytical definition of the outdoor thermal comfort for different types of

The regenerative approach to design goes beyond limiting the environmental impact of the built environment and towards the enrichment of the ecosystem, adaptation to climate change, and the improvement of human health. This concept is being applied to buildings through new standards such as the Living Building Challenge, yet examples of implementation of regenerative design at the urban scale are rare. While this is a promising direction for sustainable design, in theory new metrics, design tools and workflows need to be developed to translate regenerative design concepts into practice effectively. Among other factors, barriers to implementation remain rooted in the shortcomings of existing urban simulation tools to evaluate a wide range of performance metrics simultaneously. This paper thus proposes a prototype workflow to evaluate regenerative performance using existing evaluation tools in a single digital workflow. A series of existing and customised plugins, most of which are already in use and open source, were integrated into a multi-parametric workflow based on the Grasshopper visual programming tool. The workflow was tested on Malaga as a case study and incorporated key performance indicators related to outdoor human thermal comfort, biophilia, daylight performance, and energy use and production, based on data exchange and synergies across the different tools. These indicators were evaluated for present and future climate scenarios obtained from a weather generator. This paper demonstrates the potential of this workflow to receive visual feedback on various aspects of regenerative urban design, thus enabling designers to more effectively pursue an evidence-based urban design process.

Coastal settlements are the most vulnerable area to climate change, which has had an increasing impact on natural changes and human life in recent years. Therefore, sustainable riverside settlement models need to be developed by maximizing welfare with minimal environmental damage through modeling simulations that can help understand, compare and evaluate buildings and settlements. Simulation of Kampong Tudong on the banks of Kapuas River used Urban Modeling Interface to analyze the floor area ratio, daylighting, operational energy, and mobility. The simulation results show values of 0.21 on Floor Area Ratio, 30% on average natural resources for building daylighting, 86 kWh/m2year on operational energy, and 66 on mobility. Meanwhile, the efficient standard values are <3.2 on FAR, 55% on average daylighting, 10.08-30 kWh/m2.year on operational energy, and 90-100 on mobility. Existing simulation values indicate that these values can still be improved and maximized further for the s...

Climate change and the deriving impacts on the built environment certainly represent one of the most challenging issue for several key players involved in shaping the cities of tomorrow. This is not simply a matter of adapting buildings to new requirements, but rather to rethink the way the urban fabric reacts to new and sometimes unpredictable phenomena. The process is related to increasingly evident extreme conditions in the summer time, that strongly improve the energy demand for cooling with negative impacts on the energy balance as well as on thermal comfort conditions of the end users and of urban population with severe implication on health and wellbeing. Outdoor comfort depends on a number of interrelated factors: the characteristics of the built environment, the relationship between materials and energy use, global climate change and local micro-climate: Temperature, Solar Radiation, Wind distribution, Wind Speed, Absolute and Relative Humidity. The objective of this specific study is to test the microclimate modeling of a city portion in a demo-casea plot of building blocks with inner courtyardsas a tool for supporting the regeneration phase addressing technological choices and design solutions to improve outdoor comfort conditions. The outcomes of the performed envi-MET simulations, comparing the situation before and after intervention, are consequently discussed. In the specific case, the developed project involving the courtyard has led the Thermal Comfort perception, evaluated in terms of PMV, to shift from "very hot" (+3.50, +4.00 red zone) and "very very hot" (above + 4.50 violet zone) to "Warm" (+1.50, +2.00) at urban plot scale.

<ABS-HEAD>Highlight ► Outodoor microclimate evaluation in archaeological area ► Role and effect of vegetation in outdoor microclimate physics variables (temperature, relative humidity) ► Accurancy of trees and vegetation framework in software simulation by ENVI-MET

<ABS-HEAD>Highlight ► Outodoor microclimate evaluation in archaeological area ► Role and effect of vegetation in outdoor microclimate physics variables (temperature, relative humidity) ► Accurancy of trees and vegetation framework in software simulation by ENVI-MET

Studies on Outdoor Comfort in urban open spaces adopt several tools and software to simulate microclimate models, energy performances and the fluid-dynamics of winds. Air temperature, wind speed, relative humidity are the typical input data used by the software to evaluate comfort indexes such as the Predicted Mean Vote [PMV], the Physiological Effective Temperature [PET] or the Universal Thermal Climate Index [UTCI]. Among the available software, Envi-met provides accurate outputs as well as the PMV index space distribution starting from a three-dimensional microclimate model. However it is affected by some limitations for what concerns a user centered approach including the changes in human metabolic activity (met) or clothes (clo). This paper offers a synthesis of a study performed on ENVI-BUG, an Envi-met algorithmic app, to obtain a fast calculation and distribution of local PMV point-by-point displayed with mannequin representation.

District heating networks are commonly addressed in the literature as one of the most effective solutions for decreasing the greenhouse gas emissions from the building sector. These systems require high investments which are returned through the heat sales. Due to the changed climate conditions and building renovation policies, heat demand in the future could decrease, prolonging the investment return period. The main scope of this paper is to assess the feasibility of using the heat demand-outdoor temperature function for heat demand forecast. The district of Alvalade, located in Lisbon (Portugal), was used as a case study. The district is consisted of 665 buildings that vary in both construction period and typology. Three weather scenarios (low, medium, high) and three district renovation scenarios were developed (shallow, intermediate, deep). To estimate the error, obtained heat demand values were compared with results from a dynamic heat demand model, previously developed and validated by the authors. The results showed that when only weather change is considered, the margin of error could be acceptable for some applications (the error in annual demand was lower than 20% for all weather scenarios considered). However, after introducing renovation scenarios, the error value increased up to 59.5% (depending on the weather and renovation scenarios combination considered). The value of slope coefficient increased on average within the range of 3.8% up to 8% per decade, that corresponds to the decrease in the number of heating hours of 22-139h during the heating season (depending on the combination of weather and renovation scenarios considered). On the other hand, function intercept increased for 7.8-12.7% per decade (depending on the coupled scenarios). The values suggested could be used to modify the function parameters for the scenarios considered, and improve the accuracy of heat demand estimations.

Dünyada yaşanan iklim değişikliği nedeniyle iklim duyarlı kentsel tasarım konusu birçok ülkede son yılların popüler araştırma konusu haline gelmiştir. Ancak, kuzey şehirleri sürekli olarak kar, buz, rüzgâr ve karanlık gibi stresli iklim koşulları altında yaşamaktadır ve bu şartlara her daim hazır olmak zorundadır. Kentsel dokularının makro ölçekten mikro ölçeğe soğuk iklim koşullarına uygun olması beklenmelidir. Özellikle kamusal alanların kış kenti karakteristiği sergilemesi ve dış mekân kullanım sürelerini uzatması gerekmektedir. Kamusal alanların kentsel tasarım yardımıyla kullanıcıların dış mekânda kalma sürelerini uzatıcı şekilde düzenlenmesi, kışın faydalı yönlerini maksimuma çıkaracak bir etki yaratacaktır. Bu çalışmanın temel amacı, Erzurum Yakutiye Meydanı ve çevresindeki kentsel dokunun, soğuk iklim koşullarıyla uyumluluğunun mikro-iklim simülasyonları yoluyla test edilmesidir. Bu süreçte meydanın termal konfor koşullarının üretilmesi ve meydandaki kentsel tasarım parametrelerinin soğuk iklim koşullarına duyarlılık düzeyinin belirlenmesi hedeflenmiştir. Çalışma kapsamında Yakutiye Meydanı ve çevresindeki dokunun kış rahatsızlıklarını azaltıcı/artırıcı etkileri sorgulanmıştır. Analizde kullanılan veri olarak, alanın morfolojik yapısı, meteorolojik parametreler ve zaman parametreleri kullanılmıştır. Kış kentlerinde en uygun kamusal alan tasarımı konusunda fikir verecek termal konfor haritaları bu üç veri kullanılarak üretilmiştir. Termal konfor haritalarının üretilmesi ve değerlendirilmesi sürecinde ENVI-met yazılımı kullanılmıştır. Bulgular Yakutiye Meydanının soğuk iklim koşullarına uygun tasarlanmadığını ve kış koşullarını avantaja çevirebilecek nitelikte olmadığını göstermiştir. Çalışmanın son bölümünde Yakutiye Meydanında ki olumsuz duruma karşı bazı kentsel tasarım önerileri getirilmiştir.

Whether a journey is pleasant or not usually depends on the climatic conditions which permit to perform outdoor activities. The perception of climatic conditions, determined by physiological and psychological factors, can vary according to different adaptation phenomena related to the person involved and the weather conditions of the place where they live. Studying the bioclimatology of a country characterized by a high flux of tourism, as e.g. Italy, can provide some important information about where and when is it better to visit a place. Some differences have to be specified though, like the local tourism, which is used to that type of climate, and international tourism, which is formed by people coming from countries with different types of climates. Therefore this paper examined the climatic conditions and outdoor thermal comfort through the Mediterranean Outdoor Comfort Index (MOCI) for local tourism and through the predicted mean vote (PMV) for international tourism. The cities examined were three (Venice, Rome and Palermo located in the North, Centre and South of Italy, respectively), where average information were collected every week for an entire year. Finally, a map of the entire Italian territory reporting the seasonal average values of these indexes was also reported.

It is becoming increasingly crucial to develop methods and strategies to assess building performance under the changing climate and to yield a more sustainable and resilient design. However, the outputs of climate models have a coarse spatial and temporal resolution and cannot be used directly in building energy simulation tools. This paper reviews methods to develop fine spatial and temporal weather files that incorporate climate emissions scenarios by means of downscaling. An overview of the climate change impact on building energy performance is given, and potential adaptation and mitigation factors in response to the changing climate in the building sector are presented. Also, methods to reflect, propagate, and partition main sources of uncertainties in both weather files and buildings are summarized, and a sample approach to propagate the uncertainties is demonstrated.

It is becoming increasingly crucial to develop methods and strategies to assess building performance under the changing climate and to yield a more sustainable and resilient design. However, the outputs of climate models have a coarse spatial and temporal resolution and cannot be used directly in building energy simulation tools. This paper reviews methods to develop fine spatial and temporal weather files that incorporate climate emissions scenarios by means of downscaling. An overview of the climate change impact on building energy performance is given, and potential adaptation and mitigation factors in response to the changing climate in the building sector are presented. Also, methods to reflect, propagate, and partition main sources of uncertainties in both weather files and buildings are summarized, and a sample approach to propagate the uncertainties is demonstrated.

Human’s general perception of an open space is influenced by architectonical, psychological but also physical factors. For this reason, it is important to consider environmental comfort as a crucial element when it comes to designing an urban outdoor space [1]. In this paper, we consider the following research questions: in a Mediterranean climate, is it possible to design an outdoor urban space that is thermally comfortable for a longer time-span, usable just as much as an indoor space? Our purpose is to identify the primary influencing factors that designers can modify in a built environment, and to provide guidelines to better understand the effect of alternative parameter settings on the microclimate. To this end, we propose an innovative two-phases design methodology: first, we use simulation to gather data on thermal comfort for selected configurations of parameters; next, we use these data to train a Machine Learning algorithm. The learned model (a decision tree) is used to s...

Following years of research and design in architecture under bio-climatic, sustainable and passive-energy concepts, today's buildings are often well designed and constructed, responding to determined climate conditions and the user's requirements for comfort and, in some cases, they are integrated into the urban environment. However, the lifetime of a building can be over 100 years and the climate is changing rapidly. This work investigates the impact of climate change future (2040 and 2070) on the energy consumption of residential buildings recently constructed, under three possible scenarios. The scenarios are created considering a low, medium or strong effect of global warming. Two types of buildings, with comparable consumption results of today, are investigated in three different cities around the world with a multi-zone type 56 of Trnsys simulation tool. At the end of the work, the concepts of energy robustness and global thermal effusivity of buildings are discussed as important strategies to reduce the possible impact of climate change on the built environment. The use of simulation tools to estimate the sensitivity of buildings is also analyzed, taking into consideration the recent goals of applying uncertainty and sensitivity analysis to building performance simulation science.

The regenerative approach to design goes beyond limiting the environmental impact of the built environment and towards the enrichment of the ecosystem, adaptation to climate change, and the improvement of human health. This concept is being applied to buildings through new standards such as the Living Building Challenge, yet examples of implementation of regenerative design at the urban scale are rare. While this is a promising direction for sustainable design, in theory new metrics, design tools and workflows need to be developed to translate regenerative design concepts into practice effectively. Among other factors, barriers to implementation remain rooted in the shortcomings of existing urban simulation tools to evaluate a wide range of performance metrics simultaneously. This paper thus proposes a prototype workflow to evaluate regenerative performance using existing evaluation tools in a single digital workflow. A series of existing and customised plugins, most of which are already in use and open source, were integrated into a multi-parametric workflow based on the Grasshopper visual programming tool. The workflow was tested on Malaga as a case study and incorporated key performance indicators related to outdoor human thermal comfort, biophilia, daylight performance, and energy use and production, based on data exchange and synergies across the different tools. These indicators were evaluated for present and future climate scenarios obtained from a weather generator. This paper demonstrates the potential of this workflow to receive visual feedback on various aspects of regenerative urban design, thus enabling designers to more effectively pursue an evidence-based urban design process.

A bioclimatic design approach is based upon incorporating the microclimatic requirements into the design to achieve higher comfort levels and lower energy consumption. The purpose of this study was to investigate the cooling effect of selected bioclimatic parameters on the outdoor air temperature of an open space. Several variables that attested earlier to enhance the outdoor environments were examined mutually to attain the impact that passive design has on the outdoor air temperature.
The computer simulation was found to be the most suitable tool for investigation according to the resources available. Three variables were tested initially, orientation, geometry and vegetation where the coolest parameter of each was incorporated into one scenario named the enhanced scenario. Three scenarios named the existing scenario representing a specific site conditions, the enhanced scenario combining the coolest parameters and a worst case scenario combining the warmest parameters, were compared together and evaluated.
The SW-NE orientation, the highest geometry of a height to width (H:W) ratio of 4, groups of trees and continuous grass revealed to be the coolest parameters incorporated in the enhanced scenario. The enhanced scenario was compared to the worst case scenario based upon an EW orientation, 0.5 H:W ratio and no vegetation which recorded the highest temperature levels. The results revealed a slight improvement in the outdoor air temperature due to the bioclimatic principles applied. The comparative results show cased a slighter improvement between the enhanced scenario and the existing scenario representing the site conditions of Dubai Knowledge Village due to the incorporation of a few principles only. The results of temperature and wind patterns recorded had contributed to understanding several outdoor behaviors which are useful for guiding an ecological design for small outdoor urban spaces.
One main conclusion was the existence of a threshold to the size of bioclimatic applications for them to achieve a significant improvement yet, an improvement was possible. However, the behavior of the outdoor parameters remains quite complex and unpredictable that requires further investigation.

A B S T R A C T Extensive literature exists on the effects and risks on environmental products, and in particular on the vegetation in archaeological areas; vegetal framework, as is known, changes the microclimate conditions and may affect the conservation of an archaeological site. The objective is to verify the effects of the presence of trees on the outdoor microclimate in these areas to determine and assess the conservation strategies and outdoor comfort conditions. Software modelling is carried out with ENVI-MET V4, which allows the analysis of micro-climatic conditions of the area and the context of interactions with the vegetation. The research described in this article relates to the remains of which are surrounded by a plain of woodlands. The simulations have allowed us to understand the real influence of trees on conservation ruins, also defining the perceived well-being benefits for visitors. Result simulation about climate condition in study area show that distribution of air temperature varies depending on the presence of trees and trees species, also mean radiant temperature, while the value of Relative Humidity depend on both tree evopotranspiration and weather-climatic conditions of the season.