Impact of different thermal zone data simplification for model calibration on monitored-simulated performance gaps

The paper analyses the impact of different simplification approaches for model verification purposes considering a reference demo case of a municipality school located in Torre Pellice (Italy), which has been monitored with room detail since April 2021. The target variable of the calibration process is the indoor air temperature: firstly, results validity is checked on an unoccupied free-running period; secondly, occupied standard behaviours and adapted to real-use ones are adopted to test the simplification choices impact on indoor thermal comfort indicators (e.g. the Adaptive Comfort Model). Several model simplification actions on both building-level construction and zoning approaches are considered. Results of this demo case demonstrate the usability of simplified models, which can be adopted instead of more detailed and time-consuming full models for performance gap detections and other analyses.