Bruno Bueno

Bio: Bruno Bueno is an academic researcher from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The author has contributed to research in topics: Urban heat island & Urban climate. The author has an hindex of 9, co-authored 14 publications receiving 710 citations. Previous affiliations of Bruno Bueno include Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

The urban weather generator

Abstract: The increase in air temperature produced by urbanization, a phenomenon known as the urban heat island (UHI) effect, is often neglected in current building energy simulation practices. The UHI effect can have an impact on the energy consumption of buildings, especially those with low internal heat gains or with an inherent close interaction with the outdoor environment (e.g. naturally-ventilated buildings). This paper presents an urban weather generator (UWG) to calculate air temperatures inside urban canyons from measurements at an operational weather station located in an open area outside a city. The model can be used alone or integrated into existing programmes in order to account for the UHI effect in building energy simulations. The UWG is evaluated against field data from Basel (Switzerland) and Toulouse (France). The error of UWG predictions stays within the range of air temperature variability observed in different locations of the same urban area.

Development and evaluation of a building energy model integrated in the TEB scheme

Abstract: The use of air-conditioning systems is expected to increase as a consequence of global-scale and urban-scale climate warming In order to represent future scenarios of urban climate and building energy consumption, the Town Energy Balance (TEB) scheme must be improved This paper presents a new building energy model (BEM) that has been integrated in the TEB scheme BEM-TEB makes it possible to represent the energy effects of buildings and building systems on the urban climate and to estimate the building energy consumption at city scale (~10 km) with a resolution of a neighbourhood (~100 m) The physical and geometric definition of buildings in BEM has been intentionally kept as simple as possible, while maintaining the required features of a comprehensive building energy model The model considers a single thermal zone, where the thermal inertia of building materials associated with multiple levels is represented by a generic thermal mass The model accounts for heat gains due to transmitted solar radiation, heat conduction through the enclosure, infiltration, ventilation, and internal heat gains BEM allows for previously unavailable sophistication in the modelling of air-conditioning systems It accounts for the dependence of the system capacity and efficiency on indoor and outdoor air temperatures and solves the dehumidification of the air passing through the system Furthermore, BEM includes specific models for passive systems, such as window shadowing devices and natural ventilation BEM has satisfactorily passed different evaluation processes, including testing its modelling assumptions, verifying that the chosen equations are solved correctly, and validating the model with field data

Computationally efficient prediction of canopy level urban air temperature at the neighbourhood scale

Abstract: The Urban Weather Generator (UWG) is a simple and computationally efficient model that predicts canopy level urban air temperature using meteorological information measured at a reference weather station. An evaluation of an improved version of the model, which accounts for different urban morphologies and building usage distributions within a city, is presented in this paper. Calculated urban air temperatures are compared with measurements from a network of weather stations in Singapore, representing a range of land uses, morphological parameters and building usages. The comparison shows a satisfactorily performance of the model for all weather conditions and for different reference weather stations. Singapore is located in a hot and humid climate where vegetation plays a critical role in climate regulation, the urban morphology is very heterogeneous and air-conditioning systems are generally used throughout the year. This makes Singapore an interesting case study in order to analyse the potential and limitations of the model. The study shows that the model can be applied to different climates and urban configurations to obtain an estimation of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. However, the simplifications and assumptions of the model prevent it from capturing very site-specific microclimate effects.

Development and evaluation of a building energy model integrated in the TEB scheme

Abstract: . The use of air-conditioning systems is expected to increase as a consequence of global-scale and urban-scale climate warming. In order to represent future scenarios of urban climate and building energy consumption, the Town Energy Balance (TEB) scheme must be improved. This paper presents a new building energy model (BEM) that has been integrated in the TEB scheme. BEM-TEB makes it possible to represent the energy effects of buildings and building systems on the urban climate and to estimate the building energy consumption at city scale (~10 km) with a resolution of a neighbourhood (~100 m). The physical and geometric definition of buildings in BEM has been intentionally kept as simple as possible, while maintaining the required features of a comprehensive building energy model. The model considers a single thermal zone, where the thermal inertia of building materials associated with multiple levels is represented by a generic thermal mass. The model accounts for heat gains due to transmitted solar radiation, heat conduction through the enclosure, infiltration, ventilation, and internal heat gains. BEM allows for previously unavailable sophistication in the modelling of air-conditioning systems. It accounts for the dependence of the system capacity and efficiency on indoor and outdoor air temperatures and solves the dehumidification of the air passing through the system. Furthermore, BEM includes specific models for passive systems, such as window shadowing devices and natural ventilation. BEM has satisfactorily passed different evaluation processes, including testing its modelling assumptions, verifying that the chosen equations are solved correctly, and validating the model with field data.

State of the art in building modelling and energy performances prediction: A review

Abstract: In the European Union, the building sector is one of the largest energy consumer with about 40% of the final energy consumption. Reducing consumption is also a sociological, technological and scientific matter. New methods have to be devised in order to support building professionals in their effort to optimize designs and to enhance energy performances. Indeed, the research field related to building modelling and energy performances prediction is very productive, involving various scientific domains. Among them, one can distinguish physics-related fields, focusing on the resolution of equations simulating building thermal behaviour and mathematics-related ones, consisting in the implementation of prediction model thanks to machine learning techniques. This paper proposes a detailed review and discussion of these works. First, the approaches based on physical (‘‘white box’’) models are reviewed according three-category classification. Then, we present the main machine learning (‘‘black box’’) tools used for prediction of energy consumption, heating/cooling demand, indoor temperature. Eventually, a third approach called hybrid (‘‘grey box’’) method is introduced, which uses both physical and statistical techniques. The paper covers a wide range of research works, giving the base principles of each technique and numerous illustrative examples

The SURFEXv7.2 land and ocean surface platform for coupled or offline simulation of earth surface variables and fluxes

Abstract: . SURFEX is a new externalized land and ocean surface platform that describes the surface fluxes and the evolution of four types of surfaces: nature, town, inland water and ocean. It is mostly based on pre-existing, well-validated scientific models that are continuously improved. The motivation for the building of SURFEX is to use strictly identical scientific models in a high range of applications in order to mutualise the research and development efforts. SURFEX can be run in offline mode (0-D or 2-D runs) or in coupled mode (from mesoscale models to numerical weather prediction and climate models). An assimilation mode is included for numerical weather prediction and monitoring. In addition to momentum, heat and water fluxes, SURFEX is able to simulate fluxes of carbon dioxide, chemical species, continental aerosols, sea salt and snow particles. The main principles of the organisation of the surface are described first. Then, a survey is made of the scientific module (including the coupling strategy). Finally, the main applications of the code are summarised. The validation work undertaken shows that replacing the pre-existing surface models by SURFEX in these applications is usually associated with improved skill, as the numerous scientific developments contained in this community code are used to good advantage.

Urban building energy modeling – A review of a nascent field

Abstract: Over the past decades, detailed individual building energy models (BEM) on the one side and regional and country-level building stock models on the other side have become established modes of analysis for building designers and energy policy makers, respectively. More recently, these two toolsets have begun to merge into hybrid methods that are meant to analyze the energy performance of neighborhoods, i.e. several dozens to thousands of buildings. This paper reviews emerging simulation methods and implementation workflows for such bottom-up urban building energy models (UBEM). Simulation input organization, thermal model generation and execution, as well as result validation, are discussed successively and an outlook for future developments is presented.