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Main Authors: Manmatharasan, Piragash, Bitsuamlak, Girma, Grolinger, Katarina
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.11121
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author Manmatharasan, Piragash
Bitsuamlak, Girma
Grolinger, Katarina
author_facet Manmatharasan, Piragash
Bitsuamlak, Girma
Grolinger, Katarina
contents Building design optimization often depends on physics-based simulation tools such as EnergyPlus, which, although accurate, are computationally expensive and slow. Surrogate models provide a faster alternative, yet most are location-specific, and even weather-informed variants require simulations from many sites to generalize to unseen locations. This limitation arises because existing methods do not fully exploit the short-term weather-driven energy patterns shared across regions, restricting their scalability and reusability. This study introduces a high-resolution (weekly) weather-informed surrogate modeling approach that enhances model reusability across locations. By capturing recurring short-term weather-energy demand patterns common to multiple regions, the proposed method produces a generalized surrogate that performs well beyond the training location. Unlike previous weather-informed approaches, it does not require extensive simulations from multiple sites to achieve strong generalization. Experimental results show that when trained on a single location, the model maintains high predictive accuracy for other sites within the same climate zone, with no noticeable performance loss, and exhibits only minimal degradation when applied across different climate zones. These findings demonstrate the potential of climate-informed generalization for developing scalable and reusable surrogate models, supporting more sustainable and optimized building design practices.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_11121
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle High-resolution weather-guided surrogate modeling for data-efficient cross-location building energy prediction
Manmatharasan, Piragash
Bitsuamlak, Girma
Grolinger, Katarina
Machine Learning
Building design optimization often depends on physics-based simulation tools such as EnergyPlus, which, although accurate, are computationally expensive and slow. Surrogate models provide a faster alternative, yet most are location-specific, and even weather-informed variants require simulations from many sites to generalize to unseen locations. This limitation arises because existing methods do not fully exploit the short-term weather-driven energy patterns shared across regions, restricting their scalability and reusability. This study introduces a high-resolution (weekly) weather-informed surrogate modeling approach that enhances model reusability across locations. By capturing recurring short-term weather-energy demand patterns common to multiple regions, the proposed method produces a generalized surrogate that performs well beyond the training location. Unlike previous weather-informed approaches, it does not require extensive simulations from multiple sites to achieve strong generalization. Experimental results show that when trained on a single location, the model maintains high predictive accuracy for other sites within the same climate zone, with no noticeable performance loss, and exhibits only minimal degradation when applied across different climate zones. These findings demonstrate the potential of climate-informed generalization for developing scalable and reusable surrogate models, supporting more sustainable and optimized building design practices.
title High-resolution weather-guided surrogate modeling for data-efficient cross-location building energy prediction
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.11121