The mutual impacts of individual building design and local microclimate in high-density cities and the major influential parameters

Development of individual building in existing district is common in high-density cities due to the limited space. Such development affects the local microclimate naturally, but the interaction is ignored in current building design practices. In this study, a comprehensive and systematic analysis is conducted to investigate the mutual impacts between new individual building design and local microclimate considering the interaction, and to identify the major influential building parameters on both local microclimate and building energy performance in subtropical urban area. A large number of high-resolution microclimate and building simulations are performed based on advanced GIS spatial analysis techniques under different building designs for the assessment of mutual impacts. A global sensitivity analysis is conducted to identify the major influential building parameters. The results show that different building designs lead to significant variation of local wind velocity (i.e., −0.95 to +4.51 m/s) and air temperature (i.e., −0.60 to +1.17 K), while the local microclimate results in a change in the building energy consumption from −41.75 to 291.54 kJ/m². The major influential parameters on both pedestrian thermal discomfort and building energy performance are building height and overall heat transfer coefficient of the building envelope. This study provides valuable references for new building or rebuilding design in order to facilitate carbon neutrality and enhance thermal comfort in urban area.