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Energy Procedia 75 ( 2015 ) 1425 – 1430

The 7th International Conference on Applied Energy – ICAE2015 Climatic classifications of for building energy modelling

Farajallah Alrasheda,*, Muhammad Asifa,b

aSchool of Engineering and Built Environment, Glasgow Caledonian University, Cowcaddens Road, Glasgow G4 0BA, UK bDepartment of Architectureal Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, , Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The building sector in Saudi Arabia imposes significant energy and environmental challenges at the national level. To address these challenges, it is crucial to promote sustainable buildings. Since energy and environmental performance of buildings is closely related to climate conditions both in terms of energy consumption and potential for renewable energy, it is crucial to investigate these conditions. In Saudi Arabia, there is a great deal of variation in terms of climatic features. Therefore, the country needs to be divided into zones with common climatic characteristics. In literature there are a number of approaches to classify Saudi Arabia in climatic zones, dividing the country from one to nine zones. For building energy modelling at the national level, it is critical to select an appropriate climatic classification scheme. This article examined 16 different climatic classification methods to identify the most appropriate one for building energy modelling. Through the development of weighted criteria assessment matrix based upon the Decision-Matrix method, the present work recommends Saudi Arabia to be classified into five inhabited distinctive climatic zones represented by Dhahran, Guriat, , , Khamis Mushait.

©© 2015 2015 The The Authors. Authors. Published Published by Elsevier by Elsevier Ltd. This Ltd. is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (Selectionhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ and/or peer-review under responsibility). of ICAE Peer-review under responsibility of Applied Energy Innovation Institute

Keywords: Climatic Classification; Climatic Zones; Building Energy; Energy Modelling; Saudi Arabia.

1. Introduction

In recent years , the Saudi government has paid considerable attention to sustainability and achieving sustainable development is one of the main objectives of the economic and social development plan in Saudi Arabia [1]. Buildings are important for their energy and environmental performance as they consume over 40% of the world’s total primary energy and release over one third of the total carbon dioxide emissions [2]. The role of buildings in Saudi Arabia is even more crucial as they account for around 80% of the total national electricity consumption [3]. It is therefore vital to improve energy and

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +44-141-3318480; fax: +44-141-3313370. E-mail address: [email protected].

1876-6102 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of Applied Energy Innovation Institute doi: 10.1016/j.egypro.2015.07.245 1426 Farajallah Alrashed and Muhammad Asif / Energy Procedia 75 ( 2015 ) 1425 – 1430

environmental performance of buildings in order to promote sustainable development in the country [4]. This can be achieved not only though the reduction of the building energy demand but also through the integration of renewable energy technologies into buildings [5,6,7]. Investigation of the climatic conditions is important for any effort to improve energy performance of buildings. Saudi Arabia lies between 32°N and 17°N latitude and 56°E and 28°E longitude. It is a large country with an area of 2.3 million square kilometers and a land elevation that varies from 0 to 3,000 meter above the mean sea level [8]. With such a large land area and variation with regards to sea level, different parts of the country have distinctive climatic features as are clearly noticeable in day-to-day life. Over the years Saudi Arabia has been regionalized climatically by scientific and administrative bodies in several ways- it has been classified individually, part of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Countries, part of the Arab World and part of the Middles East and North Africa (MENA) region. Majority of these classifications described the country either as a desert or arid region (i.e. as one climatic zone). This simple description is misleading as it conceals significant climatic differences amongst various regions of the country. There is also an observation that often these studies and existing atlases did not tackle the classification issue as they are based on either analysing the climatic elements and processes or selecting geographical regions and finding their climatic features [9]. Thus, the presented work aimed to identify an appropriate climatic classification for Saudi Arabia for building energy modelling. This was achieved by comparing the available classifications based upon a number of parameters. It was observed that there is a lack of scholarship when it comes to climatic classification of Saudi Arabia with regards to building design applications (there are only two studies undertaken by Zuhairy & Sayigh [10] and by Said et al [11] which discussed climatic zones for building design purposes).

2. Methodology

There is no single classification method that is generally acceptable in the field of climatology [9]. Here 16 different classification methods were examined to identify the most appropriate one for building energy modelling. Abul-Enien [12] categorised classification methods as two groups: I. the traditional methods that adopt different climatic factors as basis of the regionalization; and II. the modern methods that consider the mutual relationship between the climatic circumstances and the natural and bio-climatic features within various regions. In the present work the classification methods were categorized into two major groups, global and local methods in order to organize them in terms of their geographical limitations. Here local methods are those which are specific for a country, GCC Countries or Arab world (see Fig. 1).

Global Methods Local Methods

Köppen Methods Budyko Zuhairy and De Martonne Köppen Map World Health Factor-Cluster classification Sayigh Method (1931-1936) Organization Analysis system (WHO, 2007) (1993)

Köppen- Solar and wind Holdridge natural Agro-Climatic Said et al Flohn Method Trewartha’s Map atlas for Arab life-zone map (2003) (1937) World

Köppen-Giger Al-Jerash Thomthwaite Prevailing climate Map (1951-2000) classification Method and Topography method Traditional Modern Traditional Modern Fig. 1. Broader categorization of classification methods considered in this study Farajallah Alrashed and Muhammad Asif / Energy Procedia 75 ( 2015 ) 1425 – 1430 1427

To identify the optimum method in this study, the available methods of classification were examined in two phases and against two different criteria. The first criterion is a mandatory one, which means that the classification methods should meet it as indicated in Table 1, while the other one is secondary and the optimum method should have the highest score from a total of 3.45 in the this criterion (see Table 2).

3. Study results

3.1. The mandatory criterion:

This criterion group consists of two sub criteria and any classification method that fails to meet any of these two sub criteria will be rejected. The two sub criterions are: A. Availability of the methodology that is used to regionalise the country (because without this information, it is difficult to compare it with other classification methods); and B. The method should be considering at least three climatic zones (this is because Saudi Arabia contains at least three quite distinctive climate areas: coastal areas, internal dry areas and highlands). The study revealed that only six classification methods have met the mandatory criteria and all of them are modern methods (see Table 1).

Table 1. Classification methods examined against the mandatory Criterion

Mandatory Criterion Type Classification method A B De Martonne’s Classification Method (1925) [12] Y 2 Köppen Map (1931-1936) [12] Y 1 Köppen Methods Köppen-Trewartha’s Map (1937) [13] Y 2 Traditional Köppen-Giger Map (1951-2000) [14] Y 2 Flohn’s classification method (1950) [12] Y 1 Thornthwaite’s classification Method (1948) [12] Y 2 Global Methods Budyko classification system (1956-1959) [12] Y N/A Modern The Holdridge natural life-zone classification (1959) [12] Y 3 The World Health Organization (WHO) classification method [15] N 2 & 4* Traditional Solar and wind atlas for Arab World [16] Y N/A Prevailing climate and topography method [17] Y 2 Factor-Cluster Analysis Method [9] Y 9 The Agro-Climate map [18] Y 8 Modern Al-Jerash classification method (1985) [19] Y 6 Local Methods Zuhairy and Sayigh (1993) [10] Y 4 Said et al (2003) [11] Y 6 Y: the criterion is satisfied; N: the criterion is not satisfied; N/A: data is not available; * 2 for wind and 4 for solar.

3.2. The secondary criteria group:

In this phase, a rating system has been developed and applied to rank the classification methods against five sub criteria. A weighted criteria assessment matrix was developed based on the Decision- Matrix method (Pugh’s Method) [20]. It is a quantitative tool to aid decision-making through providing an objective assessment for a multi-criteria decision. Three steps have been taken into account to achieve 1428 Farajallah Alrashed and Muhammad Asif / Energy Procedia 75 ( 2015 ) 1425 – 1430

this assessment including identifying criteria, determining weightings and rating decision. The criteria that were identified for this study are: I. The climatic factors used in the classification. The main climatic factors for designing building energy systems are air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and solar radiation [21]. Therefore, the classification should take into account as many of these factors as possible though ideally all of these four should be considered. II. The data used should be up to date in order to cater for any recent climatic changes. It is noteworthy that the available meteorological records are for the period 1960-2010. III. The length of the data collection period because the longer the duration of data period the higher its accuracy. Here a period of ten years was considered as an assessment scale. IV. The number and distribution of the metrological stations where the records obtained as it may affect the accuracy as well. The number of stations considered and their representation with regards to covered areas is a significant factor in terms of accuracy of regionalisation. There are 128 meteorological stations distributed around the country, and 56 of them are main governmental stations. V. The purpose of the classification method is preferred to be for building energy performance. The weighting for each criterion is affected by two factors: its significance and the rating scale as highlighted below the Table 2.

Table 2. Weighted criteria assessment matrix for secondary criteria

Rating Criteria I* II* III* IV* V* Total Classification method The significance Score 0.30 0.15 0.02 0.05 0.30 The Holdridge natural life-zone classification method (1959) 1 0 0 0 0 0.3 Factor-Cluster Analysis method (1997) 2 4 3 1 0 1.85 The Agro-Climate map 3 2 1 0 0 1.4 Al-Jerash classification method (1985) 3 3 1 1 0 1.6 Zuhairy and Sayigh method (1993) 4 3 1 0 1 2.15 Said et al. method (2003) 4 3 2 0 1 2.35 I*: each climate factor rated for one of four points; II*: (0: older than 1960 or data is not available), (1: between 1960 and 1970), (2: between 1971 and 1980), (3: between 1981 and 1990), (4: between 1991 and 2000), and (5: between 2001 and 2010); III*: (1: ≤10 years), (2: bewteen11 and 20 years), (3: between 21 and 30), (4: between 31 and 40), and (5: between 41 and 50); IV*: (0: ≤ 28 meteorological stations or data is not available) and (1: > 28 meteorological stations); V*: (1: developed for building design purpose) and (0: developed for other purposes). The above analysis showed that the local methods are more accurate to serve the purpose of this study because the majority of the global methods failed to satisfy the first/mandatory criteria. The method identified to be optimum for this study is the Said et al. [11] method. It classified the country into six climatic zones. Given the fact that the Empty Quarter is an uninhabited region; five locations are selected as representative of the five habited climatic zones: Dhahran, Guriat, Riyadh, Jeddah and Khamis Mushait. These climatic zones and their representative cities are shown in Figure 2 and Table 3.

Farajallah Alrashed and Muhammad Asif / Energy Procedia 75 ( 2015 ) 1425 – 1430 1429

Table 3. The climatic parameters for the climatic represented locations [22]

Geographic Global Solar Air temperature Relative humidity Wind speed coordinates Radiation

) ) ) ² ² ² Climatic ) Represented W/m m/s Latitude (ºN) Longitude (ºE) Elevation (m) Minimum (°C) Maximum (°C) Mean (°C) Minimum (%) Maximum (%) Mean (%) Minimum ( ( Maximum (m/s) Mean (m/s) Minimum Location Maximum (W/m Mean (W/m Dhahran 26.3 50.1 22 5.0 45.7 25.8 19 99 57 0 5.7 0.9 0 990 195 Guriat 31.3 37.4 502 -3.3 43.9 19.8 12 100 40 0 16.3 4.2 0 1053 235 Riyadh 24.7 46.8 583 2.2 43.7 25.1 10 91 32 0 11.9 3.1 0 1049 252 Jeddah 21.5 39.2 33 13.9 41.7 27.9 37 100 65 0 11.2 2.6 0 1035 257 Khamis Mushait 18.3 42.7 2051 2.7 34.3 18.9 17 100 51 0 12.4 3.1 0 1127 289

Fig. 2. The climatic zones in Saudi Arabia

4. Conclusions

An investigation of the climatic conditions is immensely important both in terms of energy consumption in buildings and the potential for renewable energy. Since there are many climatic classification methods, which classify Saudi Arabia between one and nine climatic zones, a weighted criteria assessment matrix was developed based on the Decision-Matrix method to select the optimum classification method. Among the 16 climatic classification methods, only two were found to be relevant to building energy. Generally, the local modern methods were found out to be more accurate while the majority of other methods failed to satisfy the first/mandatory criterion. The present work revealed that there are five inhabited climatic zones in Saudi Arabia represented by major cities: Dhahran, Guriat, Riyadh, Jeddah and Khamis Mushait. It also revealed that, due to the differences in air temperature and relative humidity, the building energy performance could be more challenging in locations like Jeddah, Dhahran and Riyadh in comparison to locations like Guriat and Khamis Mushait. Furthermore, it is observed that amongst these five zones, Khamis Mushait and Guriat have the highest potential for solar energy and wind power respectively. 1430 Farajallah Alrashed and Muhammad Asif / Energy Procedia 75 ( 2015 ) 1425 – 1430

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Biography Alrashed earned an MSc in civil engineering and construction Management from Heriot- Watt University. He is currently a PhD student at Glasgow Caledonian University in the area of Zero-Energy Homes. His research interests are sustainable and energy-efficient buildings.