Including indoor vertical greening installation influence in building thermal and energy use simulations

Abstract

The thermal load on urban buildings is expected to increase owing to the adverse influence of a warming climate. As means to address such heat-related risks, green infrastructure enhancements have been widely supported in recent times, while the challenge of realising enhancements in densely built cities has demanded the consideration of vegetated architectural features. Although early efforts promoted horizontal greening, ‘vertical greening’ has gained increased prominence in recent times. This paper examines the hypothesis that this typology serves to enhance the climate resilience of urban built environments, and does so by presenting an analysis pathway including a novel one-dimensional model (VGM) coupled with the TRNSYS modelling framework to estimate the microclimate and energy use implications of their implementation. The pathway’s application at an indoor atrium study highlighted the installation to contribute to a net annual space-conditioning energy consumption saving when air-conditioning was simulated.