Comparison between national and local benchmarking models: The case of public nursery schools in Southern Brazil

Energy benchmarking models assist the decision-making process for urban planners, architects, engineers and stakeholders. However, specialists diverge about the accuracy of benchmarking models used to represent a location. The aim of this study is to compare two benchmarking models of nursery schools: first, considering the national building stock for Brazil; second, using local data for a Southern Brazilian city. The national benchmarking model was obtained from a country-level benchmarking policy. The local benchmarking model was developed in four steps: data collection, archetype modeling, energy simulations and multiple linear regression to formulate the benchmark equation. Then, both national and local models were compared using data of 12 actual nursery schools, through their energy performance classification and an ANOVA test. Results showed that there are no significant differences between the models. Conclusion points out that a country-level benchmarking can adequately represent a city-level benchmarking; however, a late clustering process might be indicated for cases in locations with particularities apart from the national building stock. This paper provides an opportunity to discuss if benchmarking models, created with large stock-level analysis, indeed can evaluate the energy performance of specific buildings. The authors recommend future research comprising other regions to enhance applicability of the results.