Agnese Salvati

Agnese Salvati
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya | UPC · ETSAB - School of Architecture of Barcelona

PhD, M.Sc in Architectural Engineering
Research interests: urban microclimates, climate change, outdoor thermal comfort and urban building energy performance

About

56
Publications
31,220
Reads
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1,057
Citations
Introduction
My research interests are focused on the energy and environmental performance of the built environment, from the building scale to the urban scale and in particular on the interdependencies between urban morphology, building energy performance and urban climate.
Additional affiliations
July 2018 - present
Brunel University London
Position
  • PostDoc Position
Description
  • Resource Efficient Future Cities - Institute of Energy Futures EPSRC project: "Urban Albedo computation in high latitude locations: An experimental approach"
November 2017 - June 2018
Oxford Brookes University
Position
  • Research Associate
July 2017 - September 2017
Universidad Católica del Norte (Chile)
Position
  • Researcher

Publications

Publications (56)
Article
Full-text available
Urban heat island effect is almost always neglected in building energy simulations, due to difficulties in obtaining site-specific climate data with a district-scale resolution. This study aims at filling this gap for the Mediterranean urban context, presenting a set of tools to estimate the climatic performance of urban fabric at the local scale....
Article
Full-text available
The energy performance of urban buildings is affected by multiple climate phenomena such as heat island intensity, wind flow, solar obstructions and infrared radiation exchange in urban canyons, but a modelling procedure to account for all of them in building performance simulation is still missing. This paper contributes to fill this gap by descri...
Article
The urban canyon albedo (UCA) quantifies the ability of street canyons to reflect solar radiation back to the sky. The UCA is controlled by the solar reflectance of road and façades and the street geometry. This study investigates the variability of UCA in a typical residential area of London and its impact on outdoor and indoor microclimates. The...
Book
Full-text available
The world is facing a rapid increase of air conditioning of buildings. It is the motivation of Annex 80 to develop, assess and communicate solutions of resilient cooling and overheating protection. Resilient Cooling is used to denote low energy and low carbon cooling solutions that strengthen the ability of individuals and our community to withstan...
Article
Full-text available
We present unprecedented datasets of current and future projected weather files for building simulations in 15 major cities distributed across 10 climate zones worldwide. The datasets include ambient air temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, direct and diffuse solar irradiance, and wind speed at hourly resolution, which are essentia...
Article
Full-text available
We present unprecedented datasets of current and future projected weather files for building simulations in 15 major cities distributed across 10 climate zones worldwide. The datasets include ambient air temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, direct and diffuse solar irradiance, and wind speed at hourly resolution, which are essentia...
Technical Report
Full-text available
IEA EBC Annex 80 - Dynamic simulation guideline for the performance testing of resilient cooling strategies
Article
Full-text available
The global effects of climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of extreme events such as heatwaves and power outages, which have consequences for buildings and their cooling systems. Buildings and their cooling systems should be designed and operated to be resilient under such events to protect occupants from potentially dangerous i...
Chapter
This chapter discusses the dominant role played by urban form in determining the local-scale urban heat island intensity across a city. Urban form is intended purely as the geometry of urban surface, determined by the shape and arrangement of buildings at the district scale. The correlation between changes in the urban fabric and urban heat island...
Chapter
While performing building energy simulations, weather data are among the most important pieces of information needed by models and tools. In urban conditions, the typical rural weather files should be modified to take into account the microclimatic effects in urban areas. This chapter presents an overview of the most relevant effects to be consider...
Chapter
The increasing urbanisation trend of the last 50 years has drastically changed the landscape worldwide. The majority of world population is now living in cities and urban population growth is still accelerating, especially in developing countries. This chapter introduces the key concepts discussed in this book—i.e. urban heat island, urban climate...
Chapter
This chapter presents the urban microclimate impact on comfort and energy demand by buildings located in high-latitude temperate regions, characterised by higher heating demand compared to cooling. It focusses on London as a case study of such a location and presents results from measurements and computational studies during the last 20 years. The...
Chapter
Cities in the Mediterranean basin are characterised by compact and dense urban fabric, leading to a strong night-time urban heat island (UHI) intensity which increases thermal discomfort and building energy use in summer. This chapter reviews several experimental and numerical studies investigating the UHI intensity in representative Mediterranean...
Book
Full-text available
This book discusses urban microclimate and heat-related risks in urban areas, brought on by the combination of global climate change effects and local modification of climate determined by extensive urbanization such as the ‘Urban heat island’ phenomenon. This matter is relevant to almost all urbanized areas in the world, where the increase of urba...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The urban albedo (UA), defined as the ratio of the reflected to the incoming shortwave radiation at the upper edge of urban canyons, quantifies their ability to reflect solar radiation towards the sky. This research investigates the impact of real-world urban geometries and optical properties of facades and roads materials on the UA and street leve...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This work investigates the potential of increasing the surface albedo of roads and buildings' facades for mitigating thermal stress in London over heatwave events. The results are based on microclimate simulations with ENVImet (V4.4.3), validated using air temperature and radiation data (incoming and reflected) measured in a case study area of Lond...
Article
Full-text available
The concept of urban metabolism was introduced by Wolman in 1965 [...]
Article
Full-text available
The research aims at assessing the sensitivity of the Urban Weather Generator v4.1 to the application of different mitigation strategies for the urban heat island under two climatic contexts: desert climate (Mendoza city) and tropical climate (Campinas city). Twenty-four scenarios that modify their morpho-logic and material parameters were simulate...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Los modelos climáticos son indispensables para la predicción del clima y para comprender las complejas interacciones entre el uso del suelo y la atmósfera. En este contexto, el trabajo tiene como objetivo investigar la sensibilidad del modelo urbano de balance energético, denominado Urban Weather Generator v4.1 (UWG) a la aplicación de distintas es...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Institutional buildings are very important considering the impact on energy consumption of a city. Due to the conditions of operation, the size and the density of occupants, institutional buildings represent a challenge to save energy in both cold and hot seasons. Urban climate influences the building performance, typically reducing thermal demand...
Article
Full-text available
The Urbanocene, a proposed new geological epoch characterized by the urban living condition, is pressing the humanity to respond shortly to important challenges. Cities are at the same time the places where we live in and the big dissipators of the final energy to the environment. The simultaneous rules of heat dissipator and place to live are quit...
Chapter
Full-text available
This research describes a methodology to include the urban environment in the building performance simulation. By using the Urban Weather Generator urban weather data are obtained, than a model to consider shadows and infra-red environment is designed and building performance simulation is conducted in TRNSYSv. 17. Results show that building perfor...
Article
Full-text available
In relation to climate, cities introduce a perturbation with respect to the adjacent (non-urban) lands, since houses, buildings, industries, streets, among others, are made of materials that usually have different optical and thermal properties. In particular, they storage heat in a larger fraction than bare land. Consequently, it is of interest to...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper presents a new methodology to carry out building performance simulation at the district scale integrating the building thermal model TRNSYS with the climate model ‘Urban Weather Generator’ (UWG). The integrated methodology is designed to include the microclimatic modifications induced by urban environments on buildings’ cooling load calc...
Conference Paper
This study aims at improving the built types classification of the LCZ method, considering the climate behaviour of real urban textures of three reference cities. Analyses performed with the Urban Weather Generator (UWG) model for Rome (Italy), Barcelona (Spain) and Santiago (Chile) showed a significant variability of UHI intensity in “compact mid-...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This study aims at improving the built types classification of the LCZ method, considering the climate behaviour of real urban textures of three reference cities. Analyses performed with the Urban Weather Generator (UWG) model for Rome (Italy), Barcelona (Spain) and Santiago (Chile) showed a significant variability of UHI intensity in “compact mid-...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper uses a real-world socio-technical building performance evaluation (BPE) approach to investigate the influence of physical factors (form, orientation) and occupant factors (number of occupants, occupancy pattern, heating schedule) on gas and electricity use (during the heating period) of four new-built modern flats located in the same hou...
Poster
Full-text available
This study aims at improving the built types classification of the LCZ method, considering the climate behaviour of real urban textures of three reference cities. Analyses performed with the Urban Weather Generator (UWG) model for Rome (Italy), Barcelona (Spain) and Santiago (Chile) showed a significant variability of UHI intensity in “compact mid-...
Article
The impact of the increasing technomass (TM) on cooling demand in buildings is explored for cities in South America. The entangled double nature of the building–environment interrelation in an urban context is analyzed. The research question is whether an increase in the building density produces a superlinear increase of energy consumption at the...
Chapter
Full-text available
http://www.laricercachecambia.it/la-citta-compatta-in-clima-mediterraneo-isola-di-calore-morfologia-e-sostenibilita/
Article
Full-text available
Although Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a fundamental effect modifying the urban climate, being widely studied, the relative weight of the parameters involved in its generation is still not clear. This paper investigates the hierarchy of importance of eight parameters responsible for UHI intensity in the Mediterranean context. Sensitivity analyses have...
Article
Full-text available
The urban heat island (UHI) effect is constantly increasing the energy consumption of buildings, especially in summer periods. The energy gap between the estimated energy performance - often simulated without considering UHI - and the real operational consumption is especially relevant for institutional buildings, where the cooling needs are in gen...
Article
Full-text available
Within the variation of energy performance at urban scale, the relation between solar irradiation and urban form takes a central role. The solar availability on façades which is influenced by the morphology of the urban context, is strictly related to building energy performance indeed. In this paper, we aim at identifying a set of urban morphology...
Article
Full-text available
The urban heat island (UHI) effect is constantly increasing the energy consumption of buildings, especially in summer periods. The energy gap between the estimated energy performance - often simulated without considering UHI - and the real operational consumption is especially relevant for institutional buildings, where the cooling needs are in gen...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Compactness has counteracting effects on the building energy performance in Mediterranean climate. Compact urban structures enhance the heat island (UHI) effect, causing a strong increase of air temperature in urban areas. Nevertheless, urban compactness determines a decrease of solar radiation on the buildings’ facades. These phenomena entail oppo...
Article
Full-text available
This work explores the double effect of urban compactness on building energy performance in a Mediterranean climate, namely the increase of urban heat island (UHI) intensity and the decrease of solar radiation availability on building façades. The energy demand of a test apartment has been calculated under varying conditions of UHI intensity and so...
Article
The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect is particularly concerning in Mediterranean zone, as climate change and UHI scenarios foresee a fast growth of energy consumption for next years, due to the widespread of air conditioning systems and the increase of cooling demand. The UHI intensity is thus a key variable for the prediction of energy needs in urba...
Article
Full-text available
The lack of urban-specific climate data is, today, one of the major limit for an accurate estimation of the building energy performance in the urban context. The urban climate is substantially modified by the “heat island” effect, that determines an increase of the air temperature compared to the surrounding rural areas. By contrast, the weather da...
Thesis
Full-text available
The era we are living calls us to face the environmental and urban issues. As the main source of greenhouse emissions and energy consumption, cities are as well the most vulnerable places as for the effects of climate change and energy scarcity. In densely built urban areas, this condition is exacerbated by the urban heat island effect, which cause...
Article
Full-text available
Urban development is facing new challenges to allow the evolution of the environment, in accordance to sustainability principles. In this context, decision makers have to answer to three main issues: how to intervene on the existing compact cities? How to combine and develop interventions on different scales? How to move from requalification to reg...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The relationship between morphology, climate and energy has always influenced deeply the development of urban settlements. In the Mediterranean context, this process led to compact and dense urban textures, made of highly inertial materials and cladded with bright colors in order to prevent overheating and thermal discomfort. Nowadays, cooling and...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The combined effects of urban heat island (UHI), urban population growth and energy overexploitation are undermining the safety of urban areas. Urban morphology plays a prominent role in this context, because it affects building's energy demand and local climate at urban scale. However, this contribution is recurrently neglected. The present contri...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The research progress in building energy modeling and simulation has led to the widespread diffusion of more and more sophisticated software. By contrast, there aren't such effective results when it comes to the urban-scale climate modeling, whose geometric, morphological, material and anthropogenic features clearly distinguishes it from a rural co...

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