Modal selection of indoor heatwaves making housing environments unsuitable

Source abstract

Both monitoring and simulation are essential for understanding the thermal behavior of buildings. When analyzing a wide variety of building types, thermal simulation prevails for obtaining rapid insights into thermal dynamics. While various thermal models can achieve this, most are reduced second-order models; such approximations may lead to inaccuracies, particularly when evaluating the impacts of climate change on residential indoor environments. Furthermore, weather data is often complex to analyze due to its numerous parameters, necessitating a high number of inputs for performing building thermal simulations. This paper introduces the Modal Selection of Indoor Heatwaves (MSIHw) method - a novel method designed to identify indoor overheating periods without relying on conventional thermal simulations or monitoring. The method integrates the discrete modal method, a Simplified Equivalent Outdoor Temperature (SEOT), and spectral analysis to construct a pilot temperature that tracks nighttime indoor temperature. The MSIHw method was applied to two French archetype houses and two Parisian apartments to conduct a thermal risk analysis spanning 39 years. This wax achieved by evaluating the probability of the pilot temperature exceeding a specific nighttime threshold. The indoor overheating periods identified by MSIHw were subsequently validated through dynamic thermal simulations, confirming the method’s effectiveness as a predictive tool.