Investigating natural ventilation potentials across the globe: Regional and climatic variations

Abstract Natural ventilation (NV) that reduces building energy consumption and improves indoor environment has become a key solution to achieving sustainability in the building industry. The potential for utilizing NV strategies depends greatly on the local climate, which varies widely from region to region in the world. In this study, we estimated the NV potentials of 1854 locations around the world by calculating the NV hour. Energy saving potentials of the world's 60 largest cities were calculated with Building Energy Simulation (BES). We demonstrated that NV hour derived from outdoor meteorological data can measure maximum energy saving potential of NV without conducting detailed BES. Our analysis shows the subtropical highland climate, found in South-Central Mexico, Ethiopian Highland, and Southwest China, is most favorable for NV, because spring-like weather occurs all year with little variation in temperature and almost no snowfall. Another climate where NV can be beneficial is the Mediterranean climate, which occurs not only near the Mediterranean Sea, but also in California, Western Australia, Portugal, and Central Chile. In certain regions with desert climate and large diurnal temperature range such as the Middle East and Central Australia, greater-than-expected NV hours are observed due to significant potential of night-purge ventilation. Countries in Southeast Asia, e.g., Singapore and Malaysia, are shown to have little to no NV potential as a result of hot and humid weather all year. These findings provide valuable guidelines for architects and policy makers around the world to effectively utilize NV designs that meet local climatic conditions.