Epwshiftr: incorporating open data of climate change prediction into building performance simulation for future adaptation and mitigation

Abstract

Future weather data is a prerequisite for accessing the impacts of climate change on building energy performance. The Morphing statistical downscaling method, which utilizes the Global Climate Model (GCM) output, is a relatively simple method for future weather data prediction and is widely used in current research/tools. However, existing weather generators typically assume a single GCM or can only consider GCMs from the old CMIP (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project) projects published more than ten years ago. This paper presents a free, open-source tool called epwshiftr for incorporating open data from the latest CMIP6 project into EnergyPlus Weather (EPW) generation using the Morphing method. The focus of this tool is to ease the burden of the cumbersome data preparation process as much as possible while providing user-friendly and flexible ways to create future EPWs for worldwide locations.