Dear Ladybug Tools users,
One of the great features of this community and the environmental design at large is the wealth of high-quality open-source projects that have been developed over time -Ladybug, but also Radiance, EnergyPlus and more-.
As such, I would like to introduce a small contribution in this tradition with a free on-line platform for climate analysis, the CBE Clima tool (clima.cbe.berkeley.edu). The aim of our tool is to make climate analysis readily accessible to an as large as possible number of individuals interested in the creation of a sustainable and climate-responsive built environment. As such, we created a web interface that gives you direct access to high-quality visualization of almost 30,000 worldwide weather files from both Energy Plus and Climate.One.Building. The interface also allows upload of your own EPW weather files. Conversely, the epw files can also be downloaded for further processing with Ladybug Tools or your environemntal software of choice.
Beyond allowing the display of daily, monthly, and yearly plots of most variables contained in EPW files, Clima calculates heating and cooling degree days, generates customizable wind roses, sun paths, psychrometric charts and more.
Furthermore, there are tabs dedicated to understanding natural ventilation potential, investigating UTCI thermal stress and equivalent temperatures under different scenarios, and exploring correlations among data in the EPW.
All the graphics are downloadable in high-quality .svg vector format and free to use for research, educational and professional purposes and are licensed under a permissive Creative Commons CC BY 4.0. license. The source code -mostly Python- is also available on GitHub under MIT licence for anyone to freely use, re-use or misuse.
The CBE Clima Tool is still in its infancy and what we are releasing here is a beta version. Much work still needs to be done, especially in developing a comprehensive documentation. The comments, suggestions, critiques, and offers of help of this community are most welcome!
So far I have used earlier versions of the tool in introductory and advanced building physics classes with good results. I hope that educators, researchers and practitioners alike will find this tool useful and I am looking forward to your feedback. If you find bugs, have suggestions or simply want to leave a comment, please use this form. You can also access this form by clicking on the “Contact us” link in the Clima website footer.
Clima has been created by myself and made possible by the Centre for the Built Environment at UC Berkeley with the support of Christine Nguyen and the amazing Federico Tartarini. Many thanks as well to Stefano Schiavon for the guidance and support!
Best Regards,
Giovanni
Giovanni Betti
Architect, MArch, MSc
Assistant Professor
Architectural Design for Building Performance
College of Environmental Design
Centre for the Built Environment
University of California - Berkeley
Currently based in Berlin, Germany