A Novel Approach for Investigating Canopy Heat Island Effects on Building Energy Performance: A Case Study of Center City of Philadelphia, PA

A novel methodology of coupling the Local Climate Zones (LCZs) classification system and the Urban Weather Generator (UWG) model is proposed in this study to evaluate the UHI impacts on the energy consumption of various building typologies positioned in different climate zones. The methodology is applied to the most populated area of city of Philadelphia, Center City, and modified Typical Meteorological Year data comprising the canopy heat islands effect in the scale of an urban block or a neighborhood are produced in the format of .epw. The initial results of this study show an average of 2.7 °C temperature difference between existing local climate zones of Center City and reference TMY3 weather data recorded at Philadelphia International Airport during three sequential summer days. The generated weather data then were incorporated into an Urban Building Energy Model (UBEM) to simulate the spatiotemporal differentiation of energy demand for cooling and heating end-uses at each building typology under two scenarios of weather data.

Keywords: Urban Heat Islands, Building Energy Performance, Weather Data, Local Climate Zones, Urban Weather Generator