Tool 4 of the IDL Climate Analysis Suite · After Givoni-Milne · Brown & DeKay Technique 11
Load Weather Data
Pick an Idaho city or drop your own EPW file. Hourly temperature
and humidity will be plotted against the Givoni comfort and
passive-strategy zones to show what your climate is actually
asking buildings to do.
Loading weather data…
or upload your own file
📁
Drag & drop an EPW file here
or click to browse
About the chart: the colored polygons show where
different design strategies — passive solar, natural ventilation,
thermal mass, evaporative cooling — provide comfort. Each dot is
one hour from the EPW file. The further your dots cluster from
the central comfort zone, the more your design has to work.
Method follows Givoni (1992) and Milne & Givoni (1979) as
referenced in Brown & DeKay's Sun, Wind & Light.
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Strategy Mix · Each Hour Classified by Most Minimal Effective Strategy
Bioclimatic Chart
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Reading this chart
Each dot is one hour from the weather file,
placed by its dry-bulb temperature (horizontal) and relative
humidity (vertical). Dots are colored by season —
winter blue,
spring green,
summer red,
fall gold —
so you can see when each strategy zone gets used.
Strategy priority (used for the percentage
breakdown) ranks zones from least to most resource-intensive:
comfort > passive solar > natural ventilation >
thermal mass > evaporative cooling > conventional
heating > conventional cooling. An hour that satisfies
multiple zones is counted under the simplest one.
Caveat: v1 uses dry-bulb / relative-humidity
axes rather than a full psychrometric base. Zone boundaries
are approximate (after Givoni 1992) and ignore wind speed,
solar gain availability, and clothing — real comfort depends
on all of these. Use the chart as a design starting point,
not a prediction.