NEW PROCEDURES TO CHARACTERIZE CLIMATICALLY REGIONS USED ACCORDING TECHNICAL BUILDING CODE. APPLICATION IN EXTREMADURA

Abstract

This work seeks to determine and present the results obtained for Climate Severity in those municipalities within extreme climate regions applied to Extremadura. These data are necessary to fulfill the new demands of energy quality required by the European Directives, particulary with respect to Limitation of Energy Demand and Energy Certification in Buildings. The purpose of this procedure is to improve, expand and rectify -if needed- the information describing the climate for each of the 387 municipalities included in the region of Extremadura, collected in the Basic Document of the Technical Building Code (TBC). It is also intended to give an overall rating of the weather. Once all the weather information it obtained from pertinent sources (Meteorological Agency and Irrigation Consulting Network from the Agriculture, Rural Development, Environment and Energy Department from the Government of Extremadura), specific procedures are defined in order to assign climatic zones. Two stages are described to develop the methodology: those municipalities with availability of weather information and those without. Novel and original procedures are introduced to calculate those correlations, defined by the Technical Building Code, called Climatic Severities. Additional procedures include interpolation and correction with respect to geographical distance, height and latitude difference, in order to calculate climate records, thus improving the climate characterization performed by the TBC. The methodology developed in this work allows the calculation of climatic zones for any municipality, in accordance with Spanish Legislation on Energy Efficiency in Buildings in extreme weather regions, obtaining more detailed and precise zones than the ones on record.