Automatic calibration of an urban microclimate model under uncertainty

Thesis: S.M. in Building Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2018.

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Mao, Jiachen
Other Authors: Leslie K. Norford.
Format: Thesis
Language:eng
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/120873
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author Mao, Jiachen
author2 Leslie K. Norford.
author_facet Leslie K. Norford.
Mao, Jiachen
author_sort Mao, Jiachen
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description Thesis: S.M. in Building Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2018.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1208732019-04-12T19:27:13Z Automatic calibration of an urban microclimate model under uncertainty Mao, Jiachen Leslie K. Norford. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture. Architecture. Thesis: S.M. in Building Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2018. This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references (pages 79-86). Simulation models play an important role in the design, analysis, and optimization of modern energy and environmental systems at building or urban scale. However, due to the extreme complexity of built environments and the sheer number of interacting parameters, it is difficult to obtain an accurate representation of real-world systems. Thus, model calibration and uncertainty analysis hold a particular interest, and it is necessary to evaluate to what degree simulation models are imperfect before implementing them during the decision-making process. In contrast to the extensive literature on the calibration of building performance models, little has been reported on how to automatically calibrate physics-based urban microclimate models. This thesis illustrates a general methodology for automatic model calibration and, for the first time, applies it to an urban microclimate system. The study builds upon the previously reported and updated Urban Weather Generator (UWG) to present a deep look into an existing urban district area in downtown Abu Dhabi (UAE) during 2017. Based on 30 candidate inputs covering the meteorological factors, urban characteristics, vegetation variables, and building systems, we performed global sensitivity analysis, Monte Carlo filtering, and optimization-aided calibration on the UWG model. In particular, an online hyper-heuristic evolutionary algorithm (EA) is proposed and developed to accelerate the calibration process. The UWG is a fairly robust simulator to approximate the urban thermal behavior for dierent seasons. The validation results show that, in single-objective optimization, the online hyper-heuristics can robustly help EA produce quality solutions with smaller uncertainties at much less computational cost. Finally, the resulting calibrated solutions are able to capture weekly-average and hourly diurnal profiles of the urban outdoor air temperature similar to the measurements for certain periods of the year. by Jiachen Mao. S.M. in Building Technology 2019-03-11T19:04:13Z 2019-03-11T19:04:13Z 2018 2018 Thesis http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/120873 1088892378 eng MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 86 pages application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology
spellingShingle Architecture.
Mao, Jiachen
Automatic calibration of an urban microclimate model under uncertainty
title Automatic calibration of an urban microclimate model under uncertainty
title_full Automatic calibration of an urban microclimate model under uncertainty
title_fullStr Automatic calibration of an urban microclimate model under uncertainty
title_full_unstemmed Automatic calibration of an urban microclimate model under uncertainty
title_short Automatic calibration of an urban microclimate model under uncertainty
title_sort automatic calibration of an urban microclimate model under uncertainty
topic Architecture.
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/120873
work_keys_str_mv AT maojiachen automaticcalibrationofanurbanmicroclimatemodelunderuncertainty