A point obstruction stacking (POSt) approach to wall irradiance modeling across urban environments

Irradiation on building vertical surfaces is a key parameter for models of building energy performance. The state of current modeling enables detailed computation of the energy balance for individual buildings. However, automating building energy performance calculations for an entire city remains a challenge due to the computational processing time and manual inputs needed to inform and execute existing models. This study presents a technique for modeling irradiance on the walls of multiple buildings by integrating spatially contiguous datasets of surrounding urban form and topography with building footprints. Point obstruction stacking, which is used to determine solar occluding features at various points across the building envelope, is validated using different configurations of point spacing. Results indicate that points spaced vertically along the edge of building walls provided the lowest error estimates of annual mean daily irradiance for both single family dwellings (RMSE: 0.84 MJ m−2 day−1) and multistory buildings (RMSE: 1.16 MJ m−2 day−1). Computational expense and application of the point obstruction stacking technique are discussed.