Correlation between building characteristics and associated energy consumption: Prototyping low-rise office buildings in Shanghai

The enormous building energy consumption in Shanghai necessitates the identification of standard buildings to offer guidance for the adequate design of retrofitting strategies in order to promote a sustainable built and architectural environment. In this regard, this study develops a methodological approach to establish prototypical buildings using performance index system (PIS) founded on an on-site survey. Emphasis is focused on low-rise office buildings in Shanghai. A total of 10 office parks containing 136 single low-rise office buildings in Min Hang District were systemically selected for survey and data collection. The proposed PIS includes building orientation, number of floors, window/wall ratio, heat and cold source type, plan form, and construction year. Using cluster and correlation analysis, the surveyed buildings are classified based on the impact of each PIS on the annual building energy use intensity. Based on this approach, the most influencing indexes are construction year, the number of floors, window-wall ratio and building orientation. This result refines the surveyed building samples to four prototypical buildings as representative standards for low-rise office buildings. Subsequently, typical buildings representing each of the prototypical buildings were defined. The stipulated approach provides a systematic framework for building classification, characteristic-based evaluation of building energy performance and identification of key performance index for building retrofit purposes.