Climate Suitability Tool

The Climate Suitability Tool implements the method outlined in the following publications: "Impact of adaptive thermal comfort on climatic suitability of natural ventilation in office buildings" [2010] , NISTIR 6781 [2001] and NIST-GCR01-820 [2001] . The analysis is based on a single-zone model of natural ventilation heat transfer in commercial buildings. This method is applied to user-selected climatic data to characterize:

• the statistical distribution of the natural direct ventilation rates needed to offset given rates of internal heat gain (i.e., due to occupants, equipment and lighting) to achieve thermal comfort during overheated periods, and
• the potential internal heat gain that may be offset by night-time cooling for those days when direct ventilation is insufficient.