Critical Analysis of Software Tools Aimed at Generating Future Weather Files with a view to their use in Building Performance Simulation

Two software tools, namely CCWorldWeatherGen and WeatherShift (TM), are today available on the market and enable individual end-users, to generate future projection weather data that can be used for executing building performance simulation. These software tools have been developed based on different assumptions. Therefore, the outputs of the two tools were generated and compared both graphically and using statistical methods to get to a better understanding of their differences and, hence, to identify possible consequences when applied to building performance simulation. The results suggest that, depending on the purpose of the design, care should be taken in using the above-mentioned tools.