Hi,
I’ve been working on Sunlight Autonomy studies and metrics—specifically calculating the percentage of days throughout the year that a point, and spatially e.g. a facade, receives a minimum threshold of direct sunlight (e.g., at least 2 hours of sun per day).
Currently, to achieve this using the LB Direct Sun Hours component, I have to:
- Run a yearly simulation.
- Deconstruct the results matrix (which is massive for a full year and for many points).
- Use custom workflows to check if the daily total meets the threshold, and then aggregate those “passing” days back into a percentage of the year.
While it works, it is manually intensive and becomes computationally expensive when dealing with large-scale urban models or high-density grids.
Would it be interesting and possible to implement in Ladybug a more efficient way to handle this, perhaps through:
A new output on the Direct Sun Hours component (or as well as with the HB-Radiance Direct Sun hours component) that allows users to have sunlight hours per each of the year, and not only a cumulative annual result. This could also be used in conjunction with a daily_threshold_ and return a 0-100% “Sunlight Autonomy” value per sensor point.
This metric is becoming increasingly important for building standards like EN 17037 and urban planning codes. Having a direct way to calculate it would streamline the workflow significantly
Link to paper: https://doi.org/10.1080/15502724.2023.2297967
Best regards,
Arlind