IES Blog

To be truly sustainable, a building needs to last in excess of 100 years, and current design regulations and sustainability rating systems only require you to design against weather data that represents at best the next decade or so. Sustainable designs really need to make some assessment of the impact of climate change on determining built form suitability for the long term.

Therefore, I thought I’d take this opportunity to expand on my recent Weather Design and Data blog.

IES cannot tell you what is going to happen, however there is huge consensus around a 3oC global warming target as you will have no doubt heard. What does this mean to building design?  It seems reasonable to assume investors and insurers will consider this target and what it might mean for buildings in the future.

Let us take the CIBSE published UK weather predictions for a medium-high climate change scenario, which represents about a 3oC rise, and consider London, by far not the worst location in climate change terms, over the next 70 years.

Just glancing at the headline information you see that:

• The summer is extending and getting hotter in the Mahoney analysis (monthly average);

• The reduction in heating degree days -31% from now to 2080;

• The growth in cooling degree days + 65% from now to 2080;

• The climate classification shift – mixed humid to warm marine;

• How built form design focus shifts to be dominated by summer issues.

Just from this brief overview you can start to see how selecting and comparing weather data, especially climate change impacts, can allow you to assess fundamental built form suitability and its ability to adapt to climate change over the long term.

For locations outside of the UK this analysis is possible using morphed data from any epw weather file; a free tool allows you morph climate change scenarios worldwide.

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Tags:Building, CIBSE, climate, free, IES, Sustainability

In Architecture there is a persistent organic theme of using the environment to inform both urban and built form; obviously vernacular architecture is a demonstration of this, but in the latter half of the 20th century people have explored this theme in more detail, such that cause and effect is well explained.

In the past, greatest interest in this theme has occurred at times of energy crisis and now with climate change high on the global political and social agenda, there is a real demand for solutions that are climate responsive and adaptive to climate change.  Some of this is taught in Universities and so has a familiarity especially to Architects.

The main reason why Bio-Climatic analysis has not been applied extensively in the past is due to the breadth and depth of the subject and the fact that the logic is somewhat fuzzy.  Manually doing it properly is complex, difficult and very time consuming.  Thus few have been able to master it and turn it to everyday use.  However, the desire to utilise Bio-Climatic analysis is still alive and kicking.

Over the past few years, IES have researched this subject globally and developed the logic to a level where we can automate it, and have consequentially developed a Bio-Climatic tool, which we recently launched.

As part of the evolving VE Gaia product, Bio-Climatic analysis is used in conjunction with other Gaia tools to provide a rich source of knowledge about weather / climate data and the built environment.  It delivers complex knowledge and analysis about what may be appropriate design strategies by providing a detailed list of suggestions appropriate to the specific climate data chosen.

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Tags:Architects, bio-climate, Building, climate

Recently I have been looking at the weather data we use for dynamic simulations using the Gaia rapid analysis tools. When you consider what we used 10 years ago these datasets are a huge increase in resolution, but ….

The attached graphic shows a Mahoney analysis (this looks at monthly trends) of the CIBSE current & climate change weather files for London; you can easily see the progression over time in the climate …. the change in heating and cooling degree day data (HDD & CDD) and the increasing summer season is stark …. but there are inconsistencies in the data, the 2050 data being a case in point.

Overall this should be sufficient cause for building professionals to at least carry out a risk analysis on the robustness of their designs for + 50-80 years hence i.e. the correct fundamental form plus the ability to adapt, but we must accept that the data we use is much closer to the raw edge of science than it ever used to be and it will evolve with the science !

Richard Quincey

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Tags:Building, CIBSE, climate