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Performance-based climatic zoning for building energy efficiency applications has shown significant advantages when compared to methods that only rely on climate data. However, previous studies have primarily focused on small regions, which raises questions about the effectiveness of this approach for larger countries. To address this gap, this paper presents the first application of performance-based zoning to Brazil, detailing the process of revising the Brazilian climatic zoning standard using an open-source toolbox. Results of simulations for 100 variants of a detached dwelling using climatic data for 298 locations were clustered and analysed in terms of energy demand, thermal comfort, and mould growth risk (not previously used in climatic zoning studies). The paper employed a methodical approach to incorporate expert insights with the aim of enhancing and validating the outputs of the climatic zoning. To compare the proposed method with the current zoning of Brazil, and the degree-days zoning, the mean percentage of potentially misclassified areas (MPMA) was used, and its calculation was improved to handle an arbitrary number of conflicting performance indicators. The involvement of local experts was crucial in developing the proposed zoning method as they played a key role in defining the number of zones and establishing zones boundaries. The feedback from local experts confirmed the proposed method as a significant improvement over the current zoning, which is supported by the MPMA results (14%), outperforming both the current Brazilian and degree-day zones. The zoning method is applicable to countries of any size and level of complexity. • Performance-based zoning was successfully applied in the zoning of a large country. • Performance-based zoning considers all climatic variables simultaneously, addressing their complex interrelationship. • Performance-based zoning correctly captures the impact of topography and continentality in the climate. • The use of indoor mould growth risk improves the differentiation between climates with low and high humidity. • Expert panels provide valuable input in the definition of zone boundaries where climate data is not available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climatic zoning is an essential element of most building energy efficiency programs, however there is no widely accepted scientific technique for its delineation. This paper reports an investigation on this issue, which comprised the review of climatic zoning methodologies for building energy efficiency programs adopted by 54 countries. The paper identified that the nature and magnitude of climatic variations are not the main elements in the definition of the number of climatic zones in a country. The number of climatic zones seems to be mainly driven by the expected simplicity of the final climatic zoning, respecting in most cases a maximum of 8 zones independent of the country size and climatic variations. A total of 19 different variables, techniques and parameters used in climatic zoning were identified, the most frequent being temperature, degree days, altitude, administrative divisions and relative humidity. However, around 80% of the countries analysed in this study used only up to three variables/techniques/parameters to define their climatic zoning. This simplicity comes at the cost of ignoring several aspects of climate and building energy performance. From the techniques identified in this review, only the combination of building performance simulation and cluster analysis seems to provide robust tools to tackle the complex relations between climate and building energy performance. Combined, these tools may provide the means to explore scenarios and support evidence-based decision making in energy policy. The lack of consensus in several aspects of climate zoning indicates the need for further research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climatic zoning for buildings is an important topic in the field of building energy efficiency. Defining climatic zones is challenging, as it involves many variables sparsely distributed in time and space. Many methods exist today to define climatic zoning, most of them focused on weather-centred definitions. The actual response of buildings in terms of performance is rarely considered in the climatic zoning definition, leading to significant levels of misclassification. Early initiatives of performance-based climatic zoning show the large potential of this approach. However, these initiatives have shortcomings on handling complex building-stocks, defining boundaries between zones, and quality-assurance of results. This paper proposes a performance-based approach for climatic zoning addressing these shortcomings, relying on the intensive use of archetypes, building performance simulation, and GIS. The method was tested in south-eastern USA, using simulation results for 52 building models from the USA Department of Energy (DOE) building stock for 95 locations. Results were clustered using the k-means method considering 3 different zoning levels. An existing climatic zoning performance indicator, the Mean Percentage of Misclassified Areas (MPMA), was calculated for each alternative. The best-case scenario (3-zones) reached less than 2% of MPMA, which is low when compared with existing methods (10% for ASHRAE169-2013, 15% for ASHRAE169-2009). • A performance-based approach for climatic zoning is proposed. • It provides flexibility to adopt different performance metrics and building types. • Different weather data sets can be adopted including current and future scenarios. • The mismatch between climatic zoning and building performance was reduced. • Misclassification was lowered to 2% against 10% and 15% of the Degree-days method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]