Articles | Volume 10, issue 7
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-2801-2017
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-2801-2017
Development and technical paper
 | 
21 Jul 2017
Development and technical paper |  | 21 Jul 2017

Parametrisation of the variety of human behaviour related to building energy consumption in the Town Energy Balance (SURFEX-TEB v. 8.2)

Robert Schoetter, Valéry Masson, Alexis Bourgeois, Margot Pellegrino, and Jean-Pierre Lévy

Abstract. The anthropogenic heat flux can be an important part of the urban surface energy balance. Some of it is due to energy consumption inside buildings, which depends on building use and human behaviour, both of which are very heterogeneous in most urban areas. Urban canopy parametrisations (UCP), such as the Town Energy Balance (TEB), parametrise the effect of the buildings on the urban surface energy balance. They contain a simple building energy model. However, the variety of building use and human behaviour at grid point scale has not yet been represented in state of the art UCPs. In this study, we describe how we enhance the Town Energy Balance in order to take fractional building use and human behaviour into account. We describe how we parametrise different behaviours and initialise the model for applications in France. We evaluate the spatio-temporal variability of the simulated building energy consumption for the city of Toulouse. We show that a more detailed description of building use and human behaviour enhances the simulation results. The model developments lay the groundwork for simulations of coupled urban climate and building energy consumption which are relevant for both the urban climate and the climate change mitigation and adaptation communities.

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Short summary
We enhance the urban climate model TEB to take into account for the variety of building use and human behaviour related to building energy consumption. This can improve urban climate simulations and is crucial for quantification of the impact of climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in urban areas (e.g. white roofs, insulation of buildings). An evaluation for Toulouse shows that the enhanced version of TEB captures well the spatio-temporal variability of building energy consumption.