Investigating the impact of local climatic conditions and cool materials on the energy consumption of the urban building stock; a case study of Seoul

Rapid urbanization and reduced natural landscapes notably contributed to the formation of the urban heat island effect and as a consequence rising cooling energy demand. Increasing the surface albedo of urban surfaces allows for reducing the amount of heat absorbed by reflecting a significant part of incident solar radiation. This study investigated the impact of local climate conditions and cooling materials on the energy consumption of the building stock located in the densely populated Gangnam district in Seoul. The analysis was accomplished through the CitySim simulation tool intended for predicting the energy consumption of the building stock and the Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) model which was used for developing atmospheric conditions representing the usage of materials with a higher surface albedo. The transfer function representing the relationship between simulated and real energy consumption (EC) was developed using linear regression analysis. The R-Square value varied in the range from 0.49299 to 0.59941. The validation of the WRF showed that the WRF slightly underestimated the air temperature; the RMSE value was equal to 1.235, while MBE was equal to -0.738.