On December 15^th, Annex 80 scientists, practitioners, and planners as well as representatives from the building cooling associated industry gathered for the 4^th meeting of the Advisory Board of Practitioners. This board, an initiative of Annex 80, AIVC and venticool, was founded to put results of scientific research into action by establishing strong ties to practitioners and to include their practical experience in future research projects.

Around 20 participants attended the meeting which dealt with the topic of “Future weather data & Heatwaves for building simulation”. After a brief opening & welcome by Peter Holzer – Annex 80 operating agent, Anaïs Machard (Annex 80 Weather data task group) from University of La Rochelle gave a presentation on “Generation of future weather data” followed by a presentation from Abantika Sengupta – KU Leuven which focused on a “Case study application of future weather data”. The participants were then split into small groups and formed break-out sessions.

During the break-out sessions, questions such as the following were discussed:

• Do you apply future weather data in the evaluation of your design/chosen cooling system already?
• Do you apply future weather data for sizing of cooling systems?
• Do you consider heat waves/extreme heat events in your practice?
• Do you think your business/products are prepared for such events?

Following a 20 min discussion among the different groups, the members rejoined to share their outcomes.

Challenges have been identified concerning the implementation of long-term future proof measures. Increased resilience might not be an easy to convey reason for higher building costs yet. The need of future weather data for better understanding of events such as heatwaves has been broadly acknowledged. Annex 80 is offering the scientific basis for building evaluations through building simulations in several climatic zones.

Next meetings

Meeting 05: March 30^th, 2022

“Advances of cooling technologies (pt1)”

• Reduce heat loads to people and indoor environments
• Remove sensible heat from indoor environments
• Enhance personal comfort apart from space cooling
• Remove latent heat from indoor environments

Meeting 06: Autumn 2022

 “Advances of cooling technologies (pt2)”

• Reduce heat loads to people and indoor environments
• Remove sensible heat from indoor environments
• Enhance personal comfort apart from space cooling
• Remove latent heat from indoor environments

If you are interested to join the board, please contact Philipp Stern at philipp.stern@building-research.at