Simulating the effect of urban morphology on indoor thermal behavior: an Italian case study

The significant energy consumption imputable to buildings and the increasing concentration of buildings' in urban areas has encouraged researchers to develop rigorous procedures to predict building thermal-energy behavior in real urban contexts. The purpose of this paper is to employ the Inter-Building Effect methodology to examine variances in the year round thermal performance of Italian residential buildings located in three distinct urban contexts. To this aim, three existing residential buildings were modeled. Their energy performance was simulated in stand-alone configuration and in urban context to examine the impact of close spatial relationships among buildings in neighborhoods of varying density. The results confirm previous findings that buildings mutually impact the thermal performance of close buildings, and further demonstrate that this impact is correlated to urban density.