Response-Relevant Urban Heat-Island Weather and Residential Building Performance: Implications for Sustainable Climate-Resilient Design in Turin

Peripheral-station and representative-year weather files can misrepresent urban thermal conditions. This study quantifies how reference, weather construction, and temporal definition condition urban heat-island (UHI) effects on residential performance in Turin to support proper sustainable climate design studies. Seven-station observations (2014–2023) underpin processed actual meteorological years (AMYs), calendar-hour-average years (AvMYs), and regenerated typical meteorological years (TMYs). We introduce a new method, the Controlled UrbanWeather Forcing (CUWF), which substitutes declared psychrometric variables within a common Caselle background; full-field and al, it is correct. Since polito is also the affiliation of mine (Chiesa), do we also need my email here, or is it ternative-reference cases test the boundaries. A DOE–TABULA apartment archetype, with two envelope states and three operating modes, was evaluated through 452 annual EnergyPlus simulations. Across ten matched AMYs, urban forcing increased useful sensible cooling by 2.8–12.3% and reduced heating by 5.3–25.8%. Original-envelope full-field Consolata relative to Caselle changed heating by −13.7% and cooling by +17.8%. TMY needs remained near AvMY values, but original-envelope cooling peaks increased by 38.7% at Caselle and 57.5% at Consolata. The AMYs contained 26 Caselle-defined persistent hot events, whereas the AvMY contained none under the same threshold. Rank-based, leave-one-year-out, daily aggregation, and lag analyses retained response directions but confirmed that degree-hours, dynamic loads, and overheating exposure are not interchangeable. Climate-resilient design should therefore specify the reference, weather representation, envelope, and control mechanism rather than treat UHI as a uniform offset, thereby properly supporting building and urban sustainable design and policy-correlated aspects.