The paper, titled “Typical and extreme weather files for building performance assessment in Brazil”, was done under the supervision of Joyce Correna Carlo, professor and leader of the Laboratory of Technologies of Building Comfort and Energy Efficiency at the Federal University of Viçosa in Brazil, and received the Maurício Roriz Award in the category of Energy Efficiency and an award by IBPSA-Brasil (the brazilian branch of the International Building Performance Simulation Association) in the topic of Computational Simulation. 

Most building performance simulations - and the regulations that guide construction - rely on “typical” meteorological years, statistical averages that represent a location’s climate. This approach, however, may underestimate the impacts of climate extremes, such as heat waves, which are becoming increasingly frequent. To test the limits of this methodology, the team conducted a large-scale study across 480 locations in Brazil, a country with highly diverse climate conditions. They simulated the thermal and energy performance of a model residential building under both typical and extreme weather scenarios. 

The results were striking: operative temperatures rose by more than 1 °C on average, while energy use for cooling increased by about 20% when extreme conditions were taken into account. For low-income households, this difference could mean a significant increase in energy bills, raising concerns about energy poverty and resilience to climate change. Although the study focused on Brazil, its implications extend far beyond. «Average conditions are not enough», explains Mario Alves da Silva, «If we want reliable assessments and resilient building strategies, we need to consider both typical and extreme weather scenarios. This is true not only for Brazil, but also for Europe and beyond». 

The methodology used in the study was originally developed at unibz under the supervision of Andrea Gasparella, Dean of our Faculty of Engineering and head of the Building Physics Research Group, and Giovanni Pernigotto, professor of Building Physics and Energy Systems at unibz, and Alessandro Prada, professor of Environmental Technical Physics at the University of Trento, all co-authors of the award-winning study. The methodology has been applied to Brazil’s vast and varied climates, but its potential is global: regulators and construction professionals everywhere can benefit from more robust and forward-looking building standards. 

Now continuing his research in South Tyrol, Mario Alves da Silva is working on the CoolST project, funded by the Autonomous Province of Bozen/Bolzano. The project focuses on analysing South Tyrol's cooling systems to predict future energy needs and develop a strategy to meet them.