The use of multi-detail building archetypes in urban energy modelling

The necessary simplification of building stock models to perform energy studies in cities can impact their accuracy. This paper assesses the impact of considering different levels of detail in the characterization of the building stock, by varying the number of archetypes considered, using a neighborhood in Lisbon as case-study. Each archetype represents a share of buildings and is defined by the most representative construction parameters and average geometrical characteristics. The results show that while oversimplification might lead to large differences, there is also no need to consider a very detailed characterization of the building stock to obtained consistent results. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.