The impact of the spatio-temporal morphology of urban green infrastructure on urban building energy consumption: A case study in the hot-summer-cold-winter climate

Abstract

Studies have confirmed that urban green infrastructure (UGI) profoundly impacts urban building energy consumption by regulating urban microclimate, providing shading to buildings, and other mechanisms. This impact is largely dependent on the morphology of UGI. Although this conclusion is widely accepted there lacks a systematic approach to quantify the impact and thus the knowledge regarding its magnitude. This paper discusses the influencing mechanisms of UGI on urban building energy consumption. The city of Nanjing, a Chinese city in the hot-summer-cold-winter climate, is morphologically analyzed to extract prototypes of UGI forms. These prototypes are simulated for their microclimate and urban building energy consumptions using a co-simulation technique, which links ENVI-met to EnergyPlus. The simulation results are statistically analyzed to quantify the impact of UGI morphology on urban building energy consumption. The energy consumption of different morphological groups in summer and winter is compared to determine the impact of UGI morphological features on urban building energy.