Geo-Climatic Early-Design Tools and Indicators

he paper introduces a simple methodology to include passive cooling dissipative solutions in early design phases. In order to fulfil this objective, specific Key Performance Indicators (KPI), which are able to analyse the geo-climatic potential of heat sinks, are reported. These indicators are based on the calculation of residual local climate cooling demand—such as introduced by the author in previous works. The specific techniques considered in this paper are natural ventilation, both for comfort and environmental cooling, direct evaporative systems and earth-to-air heat exchangers. The presented method compares these solutions using typical local climate conditions and can be applied before the definition of specific building, from early-design phases. These indicators may be included in bioclimatic tools to optimise the use of passive solutions in early-design phases such as building programming. In addition, an analysis based on a set of reference locations in the Mediterranean area will be included by considering a performance-driven approach to early design, in order to combine KPI in both an environmental and a technological design approach. In this analysis, specific requirements for each considered technology will be defined in order to include a guideline for designers. Finally, climate-change weather forecast will be considered in order to analyse the resilience of the proposed passive cooling solutions under future climate scenarios defined by IPCC. For this analysis, the software Meteonorm is used to generate the morphed typical weather conditions, and the proposed indicators will be applied to study the effect of climate change on the local geo-climatic potential of passive cooling dissipative systems.