Energy & Buildings 165 (2018) 270–283

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Energy & Buildings

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A method to account for the urban microclimate on the creation of

‘typical weather year’ datasets for building energy simulation, using
stochastically generated data
S. Tsoka a,∗, K. Tolika b, T. Theodosiou a, K. Tsikaloudaki a, D. Bikas a
a
Laboratory of Building Construction and Building Physics, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
b
Department of Meteorology and Climatology, School of Geology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Predicting buildings’ heating and cooling needs through dynamic simulation methods requires the input
Received 24 July 2017 of hourly weather data, so as to represent the typical meteorological characteristics of a specific location.
Revised 24 October 2017
Hence, the so called ‘typical weather years’ (TWY), mainly deduced from multi-year records of meteo-
Accepted 7 January 2018
rological stations outside the urban centres, cannot account of the complex interactions between solar
Available online 9 February 2018
radiation, wind speed and high urban densities which lead to the formation of the urban heat island
Keywords: effect and to higher ambient air temperatures. As the assumption that climatic parameters at a refer-
Typical weather years ence location of a meteo station are similar for a densely built up area can lead to miscalculations of
Representative days the heating and cooling needs, the aim of this study is to present a computational method for assessing
Microclimate simulation the urban climate’s effect during the generation of typical weather data for dynamic energy calculations.
Envi-met In this vein, a typical ‘urban specific weather dataset’ (USWD), reflecting the microclimatic conditions in
front of a building unit inside an urban district in the city of Thessaloniki, Greece is created based on
microclimate simulations with the Envi-met model; it is then compared with a typical reference weather
dataset (RWD), representing climatic conditions at a reference location of a meteo station. The results
indicate that the proposed method can capture microclimate characteristics; higher dry bulb tempera-
tures were reported during the year inside the urban canyon, compared to the corresponding values at
the reference location, with indicative mean daily deviations up to 1.0 °C and 0.75 °C in February and July
respectively. Wind speed, near the building façade is generally found lower than the corresponding val-
ues at the reference location, due to wind sheltering by neighbouring constructions. Given that climatic
parameters strongly influence the output of energy simulations the proposed computational method pro-
vide a contribution for higher accuracy of building energy simulation in the urban context. Future work
will involve energy performance simulations of a typical building unit with the generated USWD file so
as to evaluate the urban climate’s influence on energy needs.
© 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Today, residential and commercial buildings account for the 40%
of the final energy use in European Union while heating represents
the most important part of residential energy consumption. Aiming
at the reduction of the energy demand of buildings, the Energy
Performance Buildings Directive2002/91/EC has obliged all mem-
bers of the EU to adopt a number of measures orientated towards
innovations and practices in order to respond to the growing en-
ergy demand of the building sector. It has also imposed minimum
energy performance requirements for new and existing building
∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: stsoka@civil.auth.gr (S. Tsoka).
under major renovation, both for the residential and the tertiary
sector [1]. Given the growing concerns about energy waste and its
negative impact on the environment due to excessive CO2 emis-
sions, there is an increasing interest towards accurate building en-
ergy simulation. The corresponding simulation tools are currently
widely used by architects, engineers and designers in order to es-
timate building energy needs but also to investigate the potential
of energy savings through measures that involve equipment, opera-
tional schedules or control strategies. The use of advanced Building
Energy Simulation (BES) models may generally provide reliable es-
timates of building energy demand with simulation results fitting
quite accurately with actual measurements [2].
When configuring the simulation, special attention should be
given on the accuracy of the climatic dataset used as input for the
calculation; as the IEA Annex 53 [3] pointed out, the weather file

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2018.01.016
0378-7788/© 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 S. Tsoka et al. / Energy & Buildings 165 (2018) 270–283
introduced in BES models, comprising of 8760 hours of various cli-
matic values such as dry bulb temperature, dew point temperature,
wind speed, solar radiation etc. will strongly influence heating and
cooling loads calculations, systems dimensioning, energy produc-
tion from solar panels etc. Given that long term real weather data,
measured at a close distance from the respective study area are not
always available, most of the corresponding BES models, adopt the
so called ‘typical weather files’; the latter are usually statistically
processed and mainly derived from multiyear observations, issued
by weather stations in the peripheral zones, outside the urban ar-
eas [4].
As a consequence, complex interactions between solar radia-
tion, wind speed and the increased urban densities are ignored
[5,6]; urban areas are usually characterized by higher ambient air
temperatures and considerably different microclimate, compared to
areas outside the city centres, which is usually referred as the ur-
ban heat island effect [7,8]. This differentiation is mainly attributed
to extensive urban morphological changes comprising of: (i) the
progressive substitution of vegetation and green areas with mineral
surfaces, leading to a decrease of latent heat flux through evapo-
transpiration [9], (ii) the replacement of natural, permeable sur-
faces with mineral, rough materials such as concrete and asphalt,
the thermal properties of which, contribute to large quantities of
solar radiation stored and then re-emitted as long-wave radiation
inside the urban districts [10], (iii) the low albedo of the urban
construction materials, which increases the quantity of solar radi-
ation absorbed by building envelopes and urban surfaces, causing
thus, their higher surface temperatures (Tsurf), and severe intensity
of long wave radiation emission [11] and (iv) the reduced open-
ing to the sky, contributing to the entrapment of shortwave and
long wave radiation inside the canyons inhibiting thus, the urban
cooling [12]. As a result, when it comes to the energy performance
simulation of an urban building, the assumption that the climatic
conditions at a reference location of a meteo station (i.e. the air-
port area) are the same for a densely built up area can lead to
inaccurate predictions of heating and cooling loads. This is not at-
tributed to the altered solar radiation effects within the urban con-
text that are usually treated sufficiently by advanced BES models,
but to the fact that the complex urban geometry and surface mate-
rials strongly affect airflow, air temperature and relative humidity.
In this context, the aim of this study is to present a compu-
tational method so as to create typical weather datasets that ac-
count for the influence of local, site specific surroundings and the
respective microclimatic conditions. The proposed methodology is
depicted in Fig. 1. More precisely, two typical hourly weather files
are generated:
• A reference one, corresponding at a reference location of a me-
teo station.
• An urban specific weather dataset, reflecting microclimate con-
ditions inside an urban study area.
A stochastic generation procedure is carried out for the creation
of both datasets; the detailed analysis of the corresponding pro-
cess is presented in Section 3. It has to be underlined that the
generated ‘reference’ weather file could be theoretically used for
every study area inside the city (hence, no specific microclimatic
conditions of the district are considered) while the ‘urban spe-
cific’ weather dataset is only site specific, representing microcli-
matic conditions of the analysed study area.
The two datasets are generated so as to be representative of cli-
matic conditions for a long time period, and not just for a single
calendar year (see Section 3). In order to account of local microcli-
mate conditions in the latter climatic file, the Envi-met non hydro-
static microclimate model [13] is applied. Finally the major climatic
variables of the two datasets, that strongly influence buildings’ en-
271
ergy performance, are intercompared so as to identify the impact
of the urban morphology on the urban climate parameters.
2. Overview on the methods for ‘typical weather years’
generation
The use of a ‘typical weather file’ for BES has arisen from the
need to compromise accuracy and computationally efficient sim-
ulations. To date, several procedures regarding the acquisition of
typical weather data have been reported in the literature. One of
the most commonly used hourly data format file for BES is the
Typical Meteorological Year format, created by the U.S. National
Renewable Energy Laboratory in 1978 for 248 locations using long-
term observations of solar radiation and weather data from the
1952–1975 [14]. Later updates, in the early 1990 s, introduced the
TMY2 format derived from measurements during 1961–1990 [15],
while the current TMY3 data sets cover 1020 sites across the US
using data from 1976–2005 or 1991–2005 [16]. The ‘typical year’
is composed of 12 ‘Typical Meteorological Months’ [17], selected
from different years and concatenated so as to form a single year
[18]. A detailed description of the creating process of a TMY is
presented in [19]. A similar compilation procedure, based on long-
term measurements (usually 20 years), is applied for the Test Ref-
erence Year (TRY), a technique developed by Chartered Institu-
tion of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) [20]. Finkelstein-Schafer
statistics are estimated for each month and each climatic variable
in order to define the typical months which are then aggregated
to form a complete year; yet, there are two major differences with
the TMY technique: (a) only the mean value of dry bulb tempera-
ture and wind speed and the global solar radiation are taken into
account, instead of the 9 variables considered in the TMY method,
(b) all three variables are equally weighted whereas on the TMY
technique, the global radiation is considered to be more critical,
having the highest weight factor. Another technique for generat-
ing hourly weather dataset is the Weather Year for Energy Calcu-
lation method (WYEC), initially proposed by [21]. It relies again
on the definition of 12 representative months in order to form a
complete year; still, there are two important differences in com-
parison with the previous techniques: individual months are only
selected if the average monthly dry bulb temperature has a dif-
ference of ± 0.2 °C. After the initial selection, in case abnormalities
or extreme events are found, individual days or hours can be ad-
justed so as to lead the monthly mean values to come closer to
the respective long term values. The complete procedure of creat-
ing hourly weather values with this technique along with the cor-
responding further improvements were described by [22] and [23].
Finally, a different approach is proposed in the Example Weather
Year (EWY) method, introduced by [24]. A complete year is now
defined, the monthly mean weather values of which, contain the
least abnormalities in comparison with the long-term observations.
Thus, a whole representative year instead of representative months
is sought. More precisely, monthly mean values of global and dif-
fuse radiation, daily mean wind speed, mean, maximum and min-
imum dry bulb temperature and their standard deviation from the
long-term mean are estimated; The years that contain monthly
means that differentiate more than standard deviation from the
corresponding long-term mean are rejected and the last remaining
year would become the example year chosen [20,25].
3. Methodology for climate data generation
As already mentioned, the current study aims to present a
computational method for the generation of typical weather years
that account for the influence of local surroundings and the re-
spective, site specific microclimatic conditions. Based on the pre-
viously mentioned techniques, when aiming at the generation
272 S. Tsoka et al. / Energy & Buildings 165 (2018) 270–283
Fig. 1. Diagram of the implemented methodology.
of proper climatic datasets, several years of meteorological val-
ues are needed; hence, Envi-met simulations are vastly com-
puter time consuming (for an area 20 0mx20 0m and a grid size
1.5mx1.5mx3m, approximately 45 hours were needed), and as a
result, simulations are mainly run for a limited period of 24–72
hours. In our case, it would have been extremely inefficient to
simulate all diurnal cycles of several previous years so as to ob-
tain the corresponding long-term microclimatic results. The above
mentioned limitation indicated the need to follow a different ap-
proach: instead of simulating several years, 12 representative days,
one of each month, are simulated and the urban specific weather
dataset, is then generated from the obtained microclimate results.
For this reason, Meteonorm, a synthetic year generation model
that uses stochastic methodologies to create time series of hourly
data, is applied. When creating a synthetic weather year in Me-
teonorm, monthly averages of the most important weather vari-
ables (i.e. dry bulb temperature, relative humidity, global radia-
tion and wind speed) can be introduced by the user; daily and
hourly values are then stochastically generated with intermedi-
ate data having the same statistical properties as the monthly im-
ported data, i.e. average value, variance and characteristic sequence
[26]. It should be mentioned that in order for the generated hourly
weather dataset to be ‘typical’, the imported monthly values of the
climatic variables should correspond to 12 typical meteorological
months (TMMs), being representative of the weather conditions of
the area in question and issued from various calendar months in a
long-term weather database
Synthetic years and the corresponding generators have been
vastly applied in many scientific studies where long term hourly
records of climate data were not available [17,27–29]. In the
present study the monthly averages that will be introduced in the
synthetic generator are provided as follows:
• For the reference weather dataset (RWD), climatic averages are
issued from the multiyear measured data at the meteorological
station of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
• For the urban specific weather dataset (USWD), monthly aver-
ages are provided by the Envi-met simulated microclimatic re-
sults, for the selected 12 representative days.
It has to be emphasized that in order to create an urban specific
dataset, the weather parameters of which follow a normal sea-
sonal profile, the selection of representative days should be per-
formed through a statistical analysis of long-term measurements
of climatic variables [28]. The corresponding statistical analysis is
presented in section 3.2.1. The paper is organised in the following
way: At the first stage, the procedure for creating a typical ref-
erence weather dataset, based on long-term measurements issued
from a meteo station is presented. At the second stage, the steps
for generating a typical urban specific weather dataset that con-
sider the microclimate parameters are described while the third
stage involves the comparison of the major climatic parameters of
the two datasets that strongly influence the energy performance of
buildings.
3.1. Generation of a reference weather dataset
As previously mentioned, generating typical climate datasets,
necessitates the analysis of long-term observations of the ma-
jor climatic variables (i.e. air temperature, relative humidity, wind
speed and solar radiation). In this study, two sets of multiyear
measured data, recorded in the meteorological station of the Uni-
versity campus, were provided by the Department of Meteorol-
ogy and Climatology. The first dataset corresponds to the period
of 1993–2003 and contains monthly average values of air temper-
ature, relative humidity, wind speed and solar radiation, while the
second one represents the period from 1958 to 20 0 0, comprising
of average daily values of air temperature. Given that in both cases,
climate data are only provided in monthly or daily average values,
they cannot be directly used in building performance dynamic sim-
ulation tools where an hourly resolution of weather parameters is
required. Hourly values will be thus stochastically generated from
the corresponding measured monthly averages, using Meteonorm
Software which creates intermediate data having the same statisti-
cal properties as the measured data i.e. average value, variance and
characteristic sequence [26].
The first step for the creation of the reference weather dataset
is the definition of individual typical meteorological months
(TMMs).Given that the dataset of 1993–2003 contains more
weather parameters crucial to building energy analysis (i.e. dry
bulb and dew point temperature, wind speed and total global ra-
diation), the selection of TMMs will be based on the monthly
averages of the corresponding climatic variables of the 10 years’
 S. Tsoka et al. / Energy & Buildings 165 (2018) 270–283 273

Table 1
Typical meteorological months for the city of Thessaloniki and the corresponding average values, introduced in Meteonorm.

Total global SR Tair aver Td aver Ws aver Tadmin aver Tadmax aver
(kWh/m2 ) °C °C m/s °C °C

January 1995 44.47 5.78 4.07 2.18 3.10 9.00

February 1997 63.78 7.63 5.39 2.04 3.50 12.60
March 20 0 0 103.91 9.33 6.79 2.02 4.80 14.50
April 2001 115.86 14.26 11.72 1.67 9.30 19.40
May 2002 145.48 19.60 16.12 1.57 14.90 24.30
June 20 0 0 164.64 24.20 20.61 1.92 18.30 30.10
July 1994 165.10 26.67 23.03 1.9 21.20 32.20
August 2001 155.60 27.60 23.57 1.69 22.50 33.20
September 20 0 0 115.50 21.78 17.66 1.57 16.50 28.40
October 2003 78.96 17.34 15.00 1.63 13.40 22.00
November 1997 43.02 11.80 10.10 1.30 9.20 15.00
December 2003 41.93 7.60 5.87 1.81 5.10 11.30

dataset. More precisely, the proposed method for the selection of climatic variables over the long-term period are needed. As a re-
typical meteorological months is the following: sult, in this study, the database of 1958–20 0 0, comprising of daily
average values of air temperature are used. The procedure that is
• The long-term average monthly values of the decade 1993– carried out for the determination of representative days for micro-
2003, are estimated from the corresponding monthly average climate simulation is the following:
values of air temperature, wind speed, relative humidity and
the monthly total global radiation. • For every day of each month, the mean value of the daily aver-
• The absolute % difference between average monthly values of age of air temperature is calculated, over the multi-year period.
each individual month and the corresponding long-term aver- For example, for the 1st of January and for the air temperature:
age is defined.
1st

• The month M of the year Y in which simultaneous discrepancy Tair mean = Tair aver_1st−1958 +Tair aver_1st−1959 +Tair aver_1st−1960
from the long-term average is the minimum for all 4 parame-

+ · · · +Tair aver_1st−2000 /n
ters is selected as typical.
Where n is the number of years of the long-term period.
In Table 1, the selected typical meteorological months for the
city of Thessaloniki and the corresponding average values of the • For every month, the median of the previously estimated mean
climatic variables that will be introduced in Meteonorm are de- values is calculated. For example, for the air temperature:
picted.  1st 2nd 31st

Median Tair mean, Tair mean . . . Tair mean

3.2. Generation of the urban specific weather dataset
The non-hydrostatic Envi-met v.4 tool is applied for the eval-
uation of the local microclimate conditions. Simulations at a mi-
cro scale are generally run for 24–72 hours with a typical resolu-
tion down to 0.5 m in space and 1- 5 sec in time. Given the above
time limitation and the significantly large duration of calculation,
simulations for the evaluation of the microclimatic conditions are
mainly conducted for a diurnal cycle and thus, a specific day has to
be defined for the analysis. To date, many studies that have used
the Envi-met model do not provide any further description regard-
ing the methodology for selecting the simulation day [4,30–36] or
are based on random selection [37,38]. In other scientific works,
extreme days during hot summer conditions are selected [39,40] or
days that are characterised as typical [5,41–43]; yet, in the latter
studies, there is no further explanation of how the typical day was
derived and whether its definition was based on annual data or on
longer observations. Within this context, this section aims to de-
scribe a methodology for the selection of representative days for
microclimate simulation using long-term observations of climatic
variables.
3.2.1. Defining representative days for microclimate simulation
According to Tirabassi [44], a representative day could be de-
fined as a set of 24 hours data, measured at a meteo station, that
has the least differences from all the 24 hours long-term observa-
tions of the meteo station. In the same vein, Santamouris [45] sug-
gested that the term “representative day” describes the day the cli-
mate variables of which, are close to the corresponding long-term
averages of the respective month. Taking into account the previous
remarks, in order to define representative days, daily values of the
• For every day of the period September 2015-August 2016,1 the
deviation of the average day air temperature from the corre-
sponding median value was estimated. In order to determine
whether a day is representative or not, the deviation from the
median of the multi-year period should be the lowest possible
with maximum accepted deviation set to 20%.
• In case where more than one day fulfilled this criterion, we re-
stricted the selection by simultaneously choosing the day with
the smaller deviation and eliminating days with precipitation
as the Envi-met model can account of clouds but not of rain.
Following the above mentioned methodology, the representa-
tive days for the city of Thessaloniki were defined and are de-
picted in Table 2. At the next step, microclimate simulations are
performed for all 12 days in order to acquire values of the major
climate variables that will be introduced in the weather data gen-
erator.
3.2.2. Microclimate simulation
3.2.2.1. Model description. The Envi-met v.4 three dimensional mi-
croclimate simulation tool is applied for the estimation of micro-
climatic variables. The model is based on the fundamental laws
of fluid dynamics and thermodynamics and can simulate complex
surface-vegetation-air interactions in the urban environment [46].
Two main input files are required for microclimate simulations
with Envi-met tool: the area input file (Fig. 2b and 2c), where the
building layout, vegetation, soil type, receptors (i.e. specific grids
1
Period in which on-site microclimate observations, necessary for model evaluation,
were performed.
274 S. Tsoka et al. / Energy & Buildings 165 (2018) 270–283
Fig. 2. (a) Aerial photo indicating the study area, (b) the Envi-met 3D area model and (c)the Envi-met plan of the study area.
Table 2
Selected representative days for the city of Thessaloniki and the corresponding air
temperature (Tair) deviations from the respective long-term median values.
Selected representative day Tair deviation (%)
4th of January 2016 7%
8th of February 2016 11%
28th of March 2016 2.7%
21th of April 2016 1.8%
16th of May 2016 2%
1st of June 2016 1.1%
22st of July 2016 0.7%
10th of August 2016 5.5%
24th of September 2015 0.6%
1st of October 2015 1.8%
26th of November 2015 3.3%
20th of December 2015 2.7%
in the Envi-met model) and project location parameters are de-
fined and the configuration file, containing simulation settings re-
garding initialization values for meteorological parameters, defini-
tion of output folder names and timings. Envi-met model has been
applied in a great number of scientific studies dealing with urban
heat island and human heat stress mitigation strategies. The lat-
est version, released in 2014, overcomes important limits of the
previous one, as it takes into account different U-values for the
buildings’ envelope components but also thermal mass and heat
inertia of the building elements. Another important improvement
concerns the possibility of forcing air temperature and relative hu-
midity input parameters by creating a user specified weather pro-
file with hourly Tair and Relative Humidity (RH) data derived from
nearby meteorological stations. The full forcing function is a major
improvement, as it provides higher simulation accuracy and more
realistic results [47].
3.2.2.2. Study area description. The study area, (Fig. 2a) is located
at 3 km east from the center of Thessaloniki (40.65°N 22.9°E).
The city is situated in the northern part of Greece and placed
along the North-East coast of Thermaikos gulf. The municipality of
Thessaloniki, had a population of around 386.0 0 0 in 20 07, while
the larger metropolitan area had around 1.104.400 inhabitants [48].
The climate of the city is characterized by temperate Mediter-
ranean conditions, with generally hot, dry summers, and mild and
wet winters; yet, significant seasonal variations can arise. During
winter, time records indicate daily temperatures that reach 6.5 °C
on average, falling to 2.1 °C overnight; however, during the coldest
winters temperatures can even drop below − 10 °C. During sum-
mer, average high and low temperatures are around 30.5 °C and
17.5 °C respectively, while the recorded maximum air temperatures
of the last decades rarely exceeded 40 °C. Previous scientific stud-
ies have investigated the magnitude of air temperature differences
between central and suburban areas of Thessaloniki during sum-
mer, through the use of experimental data [49]. The obtained re-
sults revealed an average temperature difference of around 1.7 °C,
while peak differences up to 2 °C were observed in the very early
morning and also during nighttime, due to the re-emission of the
heat that has been trapped in daytime in the urban fabric.
The densely built-up site, which is part of the municipality of
Thessaloniki, extends to 400m2 and contains 6 blocks of residential
buildings, mainly constructed between 1970–1980 while the area
reached its saturation during 90 s. Open spaces are only limited to
street canyons and courtyards of irregular shape between build-
ing volumes. The aspect ratio (H/W) (i.e. ratio of canyon height
to width) of the main canyons (Pittakou, Kalliga and Voga) varies
from 1.0 to 1.6 while there are two narrower canyons with H/W
ratio close to 2. The majority of the buildings are 7–8 storeys high
and building roofs are mostly covered by cement tiles. Ground sur-
face is shielded by asphalt and concrete paving materials and only
a small part is covered by loamy soil and other permeable mate-
rials. Vegetation consists of low trees and bushes placed on both
sides along the main streets of the study area while there is only
a limited number of a tall mature tree.
3.2.2.3. Model configuration. At the first step, numerical simula-
tions using Envi-met v.4 are initially performed for 24 hours di-
urnal cycles for representative days in March, July, October and
February so as to assure model accuracy for all seasons of the year.
Intermediate months of each season are selected for model evalua-
tion expect from spring period where onsite measurements for the
selected representative day of April were not available. The area in-
put file is the same for all four simulations. Aiming at the numer-
ical stability and the minimization of boundary effects which may
affect the output data [34], 7 nesting grids are set around the main
model area. The meteorological input parameters and the ther-
mal properties of the ground surfaces are depicted in Table 3 and
Table 4 respectively. For the microclimatic simulations, hourly val-
ues of air temperature and relative humidity, recorded at the mete-
orological station inside the University Campus during the specific
representative days are used as boundary conditions of the model
(i.e. for the manual diurnal definition of the variables that enables
the full forcing of Tair and RH); wind speed and direction on the
model boundaries correspond to the mean daily value, recorded
at the logger of the meteorological station, at 10 m height. Build-
ing walls and roofs are made of bricks and concrete respectively;
albedo values were set to 0.4 and 0.3 for roofs and walls corre-
spondingly.
At the next step and after assuring the Envi-met model’s accu-
racy under different seasonal conditions, microclimate simulations
are performed for all representative days, depicted in Table 2. Once
again, for the rest of the simulations, the meteorological input vari-
ables at the inflow model boundary (i.e. mean daily wind speed,
wind direction, diurnal variation of air temperature and relative
 S. Tsoka et al. / Energy & Buildings 165 (2018) 270–283 275

Table 3
Description of the model meteorological boundary configuration for each seasonal simulation.

Meteorological variable Spring Period Summer Period Autumn period Winter period
28th of March 22th of July 1st of October 4th of January

Wind speed at 10m 2.75 m/s 1.15 m/s 2.30 m/s 1.30 m/s
Wind direction WSW SW SW W
Roughness length 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1
Air temperature forcing Hourly data from Hourly data from Hourly data from Hourly data from
meteo station meteo station meteo station meteo station
Relative humidity forcing Hourly data from Hourly data from Hourly data from Hourly data from
meteo station meteo station meteo station meteo station
Cloud coverage No clouds No clouds No clouds No clouds
Specific humidity at 2500m 7 g/kg 7 g/kg 7 g/kg 7 g/kg
Solar adjustment factor 1 1 1 1
Soil upper layer(0–20 cm) initial temperature (data from meteo station) 284.3K 305 K 292 K 280.3 K
Soil upper layer(20–50 cm) initial temperature (data from meteo station) 285 K 304 K 293 K 282 K
Soil upper layer(50–200 cm) initial temperature (data from meteo station) 290 K 293 K 293 K 290 K
Soil deeper layer initial temperature 293 K 293 K 293 K 293 K
Soil upper layer(0–20 cm) moisture content∗ 50% 50% 50% 50%
Soil upper layer(20–50 cm) moisture content∗ 60% 60% 60% 60%
Soil upper layer(50–200 cm) moisture content ∗ 60% 60% 60% 60%
Soil deeper layer moisture content∗ 60% 60% 60% 60%
∗
Envi-met default values.

Table 4
Thermal properties of ground surface materials [50,51].

Material Emissivity Solar Volumetric heat Thermal

reflectance capacity Cp conductivity λ
(J/m3 K) (W/mK)

Asphalt 0.90 0.10 2.1 × 106 0.7

Concrete tiles 0.90 0.30 2.1 × 106 1.5
Soil 0.95 0.20 3.0 × 106 1.5

humidity) are issued from onsite records of the meteorological sta- Fig. 3. Placement of the logger on a balcony of an apartment in Pittakou Street.
tion for the specific days. The logger was mounted on a tripod and protected from direct and reflected solar
radiation, using a suitable solar radiation shield.

4. Results

4.1. Envi-met model evaluation
The accuracy of the microclimate simulation results strongly
depends on the initial boundary conditions and the input data;
therefore special attention should be given when defining the ini-
tial parameters [52]. Based on the recommendations of Willmott
[53], the statistical evaluation of the model was carried out us-
ing a set of indices that describe the magnitude of difference be-
tween observation and prediction. The recommended measures in-
clude the root mean square error (RMSE), the mean absolute er-
ror and the index of agreement (d). The RMSE and the MAE pro-
vide information on the average error and are generally considered
suitable measures for the model’s performance. Regarding the in-
dex of agreement, it indicates how possible is for the model to
predict a variable without errors with values ranging from 0 to
1.A monitoring project of air temperature and relative humidity
was carried out during the period September 2015-August 2016,
using high accuracy and weatherproof Onset Hobo data loggers
with built-in temperature and relative humidity sensors, suitable
for outdoor environments. The technical characteristics of the log-
gers that were used are the following:
• Model name: HOBO U23001.
• Operation range: − 40 °C to 70 °C for the temperature sensor
and 0 to 100% for the relative humidity sensor.
• Logger resolution: 0.02 °C for the temperature sensor and 0.03%
for the relative humidity sensor.
The logger was mounted on a tripod and was then placed on a
first floor balcony of an apartment in Pittakou Street, which is one
of the main streets of the study area, at a height of nearly 4.5 m
(Fig. 3). In order to enhance the accuracy of temperature and RH
measurements, the logger was protected from direct and reflected
solar radiation with a suitable radiation shield. Measurements of
air temperature and relative humidity were taken for all 4 seasons
during the year, at an interval of 30 minutes.
The obtained readings are then used to investigate current mi-
croclimatic conditions but also to evaluate the microclimate simu-
lation tool. Simulations are performed for the representative days
defined previously and the results are compared with onsite mea-
surements of air temperature and relative humidity. For this rea-
son, virtual receptors were placed in the measurement points of
the study area, inside the Envi-met model, in order to acquire mi-
croclimate results at different heights. Simulation results for air
temperature and relative humidity are also compared with obser-
vations recorded in the meteo station of the Meteorology and Cli-
matology Department of the Aristotle University. The comparison
between modeled and observed values for both air temperature
and relative humidity for all seasons is shown in Fig. 4; the quan-
titative evaluation using statistical indices is presented in Table 5
while in Table 6, the results of Envi-met evaluation in previous
studies and the corresponding statistical indices are reported. To
date, most of the studies that have evaluated the accuracy of the
Envi-met model were mainly based on air, surface and mean ra-
diant temperature measurements [30,34,36,38,40,47,52,54–58] and
only a few have evaluated the model’s performance with relative
humidity values [31,59] or specific humidity values [57,34].
As presented in Fig. 4, during all seasons, air temperatures mea-
sured inside the study area are always higher than the corre-
276 S. Tsoka et al. / Energy & Buildings 165 (2018) 270–283

Fig. 4. Evolution of measured and simulated Tair and RH for a representative day in (a) March, (b) July, (c) October, (d) January.
 S. Tsoka et al. / Energy & Buildings 165 (2018) 270–283 277

Fig. 5. (a) 3D representation of the studied apartment in Google earth and (b) in the Envi-met model, (c) position of receptors in front of the studied apartment.

Table 5 (a) the urban heat island effect and the corresponding higher air
Quantitative evaluation of the Envi-met model based on the calculation of RMSE,
temperature inside the urban district is not handled by the model
MAE and d.
since the air temperatures on the model boundaries are issued
RMSE( °C) MAE( °C) d from a meteo station outside the study area, (b) the effect of mul-
Tair ( °C) March 1.14 0.95 0.93 tiple reflections and the entrapment of longwave radiation due to
July 1.02 0.82 0.94 reduced sky view factor are also not taken into consideration dur-
October 1.55 1.50 0.65 ing the calculations, (c) the anthropogenic heat flux resulting from
January 0.85 0.78 0.70
the use of air conditioners, transportation and other human activ-
RMSE(% ) MAE(% ) d
RH(%) March 6.70 2.50 0.90 ities, the effect of which is more prominent in warmer periods, is
July 10.24 7.70 0.97 not taken into account during the microclimate simulation and (d)
October 4.80 3.50 0.98 the sea breeze effect, mainly occurring during the warm period is
January 4.7 4.3 0.97
not taken into account by the model. As previous studies indicated,
in the city of Thessaloniki, the mean frequency of the sea breeze
Table 6
occurrence is around 17 days per month, during the warm period
Overview of deviations in air temperature between simulation and observation in of the year [60]. As the study area is at a rather close distance
other studies. from the sea (approximately 300 m), the observed air temperatures
Study Simulation period Variable RMSE[°C] MAE[°C] d
during summer will be strongly influenced by the sea breeze. The
latter remark could thus explain the overestimation of air temper-
[40] summer Tair 2.79 2.26–3.49 0.86–0.92
atures in July, occurring from 9:00 to 12:30 and with an average
[52] summer Tair 1.51 – 0.97
[55] autumn Tair 1.31–1.53 1.16–1.33 0.40–0.47 discrepancy of 1.10 °C. Concerning relative humidity results, during
[57] summer Tair 0.96–1.68 0.86–1.43 – spring and winter simulations, the model tends to overestimate the
[56] summer Tair 1.06–2.73 – – relative humidity values with better agreement being reported in
[58] autumn Tair 1.11–1.41 0.94–1.21 0.87–0.91
January; However, underestimation and higher deviations were re-
winter 0.66–0.89 0.60–0.61 0.95–0.97
summer 0.52–0.75 0.40–0.62 0.95–0.98
ported during summer simulations, mainly attributed to the fact
[30] autumn Tair 3.84–4.32 3.35–3.67 0.69–0.71 that the study area is strongly influence by the sea breeze and the
winter 2.45–2.77 2.14–2.38 0.75–0.82 corresponding cooler air, introduced inside the urban canyons, a
spring 2.95–3.97 2.56–3.28 0.68–0.84 phenomenon that cannot be reproduced by the model.
summer 1.46–2.92 1.35–2.46 0.75–0.94
Based on the previous remarks and on statistical indices’ val-
ues already accepted in previous evaluation studies (Table 6), Envi-
met can be considered as a reliable tool for microclimate simula-
sponding values recorded in the meteo station. During spring and tion under different meteorological conditions. Microclimate sim-
summer, the average discrepancy is 1.30 °C and 1.19 °C respectively ulations for the rest of the representative days are then carried
while in winter, the average difference is close to 1.20 °C. This can out and the acquired microclimatic averages are introduced in the
be explained by the fact that meteorological station of the Uni- stochastic weather generator so as to create the USWD file.
versity is placed in a park area, and rather far from heavy traf-
fic, with increased vegetation consisting of tall and densely foliated 4.2. Application of the method
trees, lower solar gains, lower building density and thus better mi-
croclimatic conditions. In terms of air temperature results, during The proposed computational method is applied at a1st floor
spring, summer and winter simulations, the Envi-met model tends apartment of Pittakou Street, which is one of the main canyons of
to over-estimate part of night-time temperatures (i.e. from 0 0:0 0 the study area. The hourly weather file is created in order to rep-
to 2:00) and under-estimate day-time temperatures, a feature that resent the immediate climatic conditions in front of the specific
has also been reported in previous studies [40,30,56]. Regarding building unit. Only the main façade is exposed to exterior condi-
autumn simulations, the model always underestimates air temper- tions while the ground surface, ceiling and the rest of the vertical
ature and a similar trend was previously reported in other stud- facades are considered as adiabatic due to the same operational
ies [41]. Some factors that could explain the differences between schedules between the apartments. The ground floor of the anal-
modeled and measured air temperature values are the following: ysed building has a 4.5 m height while typical building floors were
278 S. Tsoka et al. / Energy & Buildings 165 (2018) 270–283

Fig. 6. Inter–annual daily temperatures (a), Relative Humidity (c) and wind speed (e) values for the urban specific weather dataset and the reference weather dataset as
well as the mean monthly values for the same three parameters for the urban specific weather dataset and reference weather dataset) over a typical year.

of 3 m height. Thus, for a 1st floor apartment, microclimate data
necessary for BES modelling were extracted for heights between
4.50 m and 7.50 m. Based on the recommendations of Yang et al.
[5] and Morakinyo et al. [31], five receptor points providing micro-
climatic values of air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed,
shortwave radiation, mean radiant temperature etc. were placed at
0.75 m away from the façade (Fig. 5); The obtained microclimate
values from the five receptors were then averaged and the esti-
mated values were then used as the monthly input data for the
Meteonorm weather generator.
Based on the methodology presented in Section 2, the two
typical hourly weather files are generated (i.e. Reference Weather
Dataset, RWD and Urban Specific Weather Dataset, USWD); in
section 4.3, climatic variables of the USWD, involving air temper-
ature, wind speed and relative humidity, are compared with the
corresponding values of RWD.
4.3. Comparison of the generated annual weather datasets
The analysis of the air temperature (dry bulb temperatures) be-
tween the RWD and the USWD, on a daily basis throughout the
year, showed that both data sets follow a similar inter-annual pro-
file with the latter one generally presenting higher Tair values
(Fig. 6a). The range of the daily dry bulb temperature vary be-
tween −1.4 °C to 31.1 °C and −1.5 °C to 30.4 °C for the urban spe-
cific and the reference weather dataset respectively. Aiming on a
more thorough analysis of the results, the mean monthly values
for both data sets are calculated (Fig. 6b). For every case, air tem-
peratures of the RWD file are lower than the corresponding USWD
values, indicating the effect of different microclimatic conditions
inside the densely built-up area, which are sufficiently reproduced
by the Envi-met model. The smaller differences are found in Jan-
uary (0.1 °C) where the study area is practically kept in shadow
 S. Tsoka et al. / Energy & Buildings 165 (2018) 270–283
Fig. 7. Inter- daily air temperature variation for each month of the year for the Urban Specific Weather Dataset (red curve) and the Reference Weather Dataset (blue line).
during all day and the solar radiation effect is significantly low,
while the highest ones are observed in September (1.5 °C).
In terms of the relative humidity values, it should be mentioned
that the stochastic model primarily simulates the dew point tem-
peratures which were then transformed/converted to relative hu-
midity values (%). Contrarily to the temperature results, the inter-
annual daily values of this parameter differs quite substantially
(the correlation coefficient does not exceed 0.4), with the USWD
values being higher, in general, during the cold period of the year,
and lower to the RWD ones during the warmer season (Fig. 6c).
This finding is confirmed by the mean monthly values with posi-
tive differences (USWD – RWD) for January, February, March and
November and negative differences for the period March – August
and October. (Fig. 6d).
Regarding wind speed, considerable differences are generally
observed in the day to day USWD and RWD datasets (Fig. 6e) with
wind speed values of the latter one, being generally higher than
the urban specific values. In the same vein, the mean monthly
values analysis showed that for the majority of the months, the
RWD wind speeds are higher, with the largest differences found in
January (1.3 m/sec) followed by June and July with (1.0 m/sec) and
the lowest ones in September (0.3 m/sec) and October (0.02 m/sec)
(Fig. 6f). The observed deviations can be attributed to the atten-
uation of the wind speed inside the urban district due to the in-
creased building heights and high building density, compared to
the corresponding values observed at the reference location, in an
open field and less sheltered by constructions. However, it is worth
mentioning that during May, the USWD wind speed is higher than
279
the corresponding RWD value by 0.5 m/sec. This can be explained
by the fact that the parameter of wind speed was not considered
during the definition of the representative days for microclimate
simulation. As a result, potential wind gusts or extreme wind con-
ditions during that day, provoking an important rise of the average
daily value of wind speed, were not taken into account.
On a final step, the performance of the method was investi-
gated on an hourly basis. More precisely, for both USWD and RWD
datasets and for each month, the mean hourly values of the three
examined parameters are calculated and compared. Fig. 7 illus-
trates the results concerning the hourly air temperature values. It
is observed that both datasets follow the expected inter-daily tem-
perature variability with the lowest values early in the morning
and the maximum ones two or three hours after mid-day. The air
temperature values of USWD are generally higher than the RWD
ones, with the largest differences detected during the month of
September. The reported discrepancies between the study area and
the park area of the meteo station are the result of complex mi-
croclimatic conditions, reproduced by Envi-met model and mainly
attributed to the increased building density of the study area, con-
tributing to lower longwave radiation losses, to the thermal prop-
erties of the construction materials, enhancing the storage of emit-
tance of sensible heat to the air and also to the reduced green ar-
eas leading to lower amounts of latent heat. The only exception is
for the month of January where the USWD and RWD mean hourly
values are very similar and the computed curves almost match
each other. As already mentioned, the whole study area is kept in
280 S. Tsoka et al. / Energy & Buildings 165 (2018) 270–283
Fig. 8. Inter- daily relative humidity variation for each month of the year for the Urban Specific Weather Dataset (red curve) and the Reference Weather Dataset (blue line).
shadow for most of the daytime and thus, solar radiation does in-
crease the ambient air temperature.
The behavior of the method in the reproduction of the dew
point temperature-relative humidity is rather more complicated
(Fig. 8). In general, the maximum is observed during the early
morning hours (5 to 7 pm) and the minimum two or three hours
after mid-day. This pattern is almost identical during all months.
However, during the cold period of the year, the mean hourly rel-
ative humidity model values of the USWD dataset are higher than
the RWD ones, which could be partly attributed to the entrap-
ment of humidity in front of the building façade due to low so-
lar radiation values and reduced wind speed. On the other hand,
for the warm period (i.e. April-October) during which solar radi-
ation intensity is more important, USWD relative humidity values
are lower than the corresponding of the RWD file with the greatest
deviations generally reported from 13:00 to 18:00 in the afternoon.
Regarding mean hourly wind speed, in most months, both
datasets follow a similar inter-day profile with maximum values
being observed between 14:00 and 17:00 and a secondary maxi-
mum (much smaller one) from 2:00 to 3:00 in the morning. Once
again, USWD wind speed values are significantly lower, compared
to the RWD ones, as wind speed inside the urban district is con-
siderably reduced due to obstacles created by building volumes.
Hence, the opposite phenomenon is observed during May, where
the urban specific mean hourly values are higher than the cor-
responding values at the reference location. As previously men-
tioned, this exception is attributed to the fact that the parame-
ter of wind speed was not taken into account during the selec-
tion of representative days; as a result, extreme wind speed gusts
or even very calm wind conditions occurring in the representative
days, are neglected (Fig. 9). The latter remark could also explain
the fact that, during October, the USWD and the RWD time series
are almost identical.
5. Discussion
To date, most of the BES models adopt weather files, based on
long-term measurements recorded at meteorological stations out-
side the city centres and consider buildings as stand-alone [6].
As mentioned by Guattari et al. [61], Typical Meteorological Years
(issued from multiyear records of meteo stations away from city
centres) could be considered more consistent for energy perfor-
mance calculations of buildings located in new residential areas in
the peripheral zones, characterized by lower building densities and
higher vegetation coverage. However, when it comes to simulations
of urban buildings and given that climatic parameters strongly in-
fluence the output of energy simulations [62], accounting of com-
plex interactions between climatic variables and increased urban
densities, is of high importance. In this study, a typical urban spe-
cific weather dataset, reflecting the microclimatic conditions in
front of a building unit inside an urban district in Thessaloniki,
was generated based on microclimate simulations with the Envi-
met model; it was then compared with a typical reference weather
dataset, representing climatic conditions at a reference location of
a meteo station.
The analysis revealed that dry bulb temperature is generally
higher inside the urban canyon, compared to the corresponding
values at the reference location, with indicative mean daily devi-
ations reaching 1.0 °C, 0.63 °C and 0.75 °C in February, March and
July respectively. The tendency of the urban area to present higher
 S. Tsoka et al. / Energy & Buildings 165 (2018) 270–283
Fig. 9. Inter- daily wind speed variation for each month of the year for the Urban Specific Weather Dataset (red curve) and the Reference Weather Dataset (blue line).
dry bulb temperatures was confirmed with onsite measurements,
carried out in the study area and the meteo station during 20
consecutive days in February, March and July 2016; the average
daily difference of air temperatures was estimated close to 1.10 °C,
1.50 °C and 1.20 °C respectively. It has to be mentioned that the
magnitudes of air temperature deviations, obtained by the onsite
measurements and the computational method are different as the
calendar year 2016 and the corresponding climatic parameters can-
not be considered as typical; yet, the datasets generated by the
proposed methodology are created so as to be representative of
climatic conditions for a long time period, and not just for a sin-
gle calendar year. The higher ambient air temperatures reported
inside the urban areas are expected to have a great impact on
the estimated building energy needs for heating and cooling pur-
poses [63]. On the one hand, higher winter temperatures will have
a positive impact on lowering the heating energy needs but on the
other hand, in cities characterized by cooling dominated climatic
conditions, such as Thessaloniki [64], high urban air temperatures
will considerably increase cooling energy needs and peak electric-
ity demand. Findings of a recent literature review suggest that the
rise of the peak electricity load per degree of air temperature in-
crease, ranges between 0.45% and 4.6% [65], while the comparative
analysis of existing scientific results revealed that the average in-
crease of the cooling load due to the urban warming is close to
13%, depending on the intensity of the phenomenon and the build-
ing characteristics [66].
In terms of wind profile, the acquired simulation results indi-
cated that wind speed inside the urban canyon, near the build-
ing unit façade is generally lower than the corresponding values
at the reference location, due to wind sheltering by neighbour-
ing buildings. As a result, the convective heat flux normal to the
281
wall and the corresponding cooling of the building unit envelope
will be considerably reduced. The importance of accounting of the
wind speed reduction inside the urban canyons and its influence
on the buildings energy simulation results has already been em-
phasized in previous studies [67]. However, since wind speed pa-
rameter was not taken into consideration during the definition of
the representative day, due to lack of long term daily wind speed
data, potential wind gusts or very calm conditions were not cap-
tured resulting thus in the opposite profile for the month of May
where USWD wind speeds are higher than the corresponding val-
ues of the reference location. In order to solve this problem, long-
term daily values of wind speed would be also needed; the statis-
tical procedure of the Section 3.2.1 could be then followed and the
selection of the representative day would be based at the simul-
taneous lowest deviation from the long-term median, for both cli-
matic parameters; yet, it has to be emphasized that the parameter
of wind speed is highly influenced by local features and temporal
variations can be very large; defining representative wind speed
conditions can be thus a rather difficult task to achieve. Similarly
for the parameter of relative humidity, simulated values inside the
urban district were found generally higher during the cold period
of the year, and lower than the RWD ones during the warmer sea-
son. Based on indications of existing studies, this differentiation
can have a significant impact on the dynamic energy simulations
as the latent loads of the building unit will considerably differ, af-
fecting the sizing of the HVAC system [62,68]. To sum up, find-
ings of the present paper indicate the importance of accounting
of local microclimatic conditions, when aiming at high accuracy of
building energy calculations. Future work comprises of two runs of
energy performance simulations of a typical building unit, by re-
placing the existing weather file in the BES model with the two
282 S. Tsoka et al. / Energy & Buildings 165 (2018) 270–283
generated datasets. The quantitative evaluation of the obtained re-
sults will then indicate the effect of microclimatic conditions of the
study area, on heating and cooling needs.
6. Main conclusions
This paper presents a computational method for assessing the
urban climate’s effect during the creation of typical weather years
for dynamic building energy calculations. In this vein, the results of
Envi-met microclimate simulations for 12 representative days are
used as input in Meteonorm stochastic weather generator so as to
create an urban specific weather dataset (USWD), which is finally
compared with a reference stochastically created weather dataset
(RWD) reflecting climatic conditions at a meteo station. The analy-
sis initially revealed that the Envi-met model can sufficiently re-
produce special microclimatic conditions of an urban area. Fur-
thermore, for all 12 months of the year, air temperatures of the
RWD file are inferior to the corresponding USWD values, indicating
the effect of dissimilar climatic conditions inside the dense urban
district compared to the meteo station. In addition, USWD wind
speed values are generally found lower, compared to the RWD ones
due to the attenuation of wind flow, provoked by building vol-
umes. Further research would be necessary so as to quantify the
impact of the differentiated microclimatic conditions of the urban
area on heating and cooling needs of an urban building unit.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Department of Meteorol-
ogy and Climatology of the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, for
the provision of climate data.
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