Ali, UsmanUsmanAliShamsi, Mohammad HarisMohammad HarisShamsiHoare, CathalCathalHoareMangina, EleniEleniManginaO'Donnell, JamesJamesO'Donnell2019-08-202019-08-202019 Elsev2019-11Energy and Buildings0378-7788http://hdl.handle.net/10197/10998Globally the building sector accounts for a significant portion of the overall energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions of any country. The most common approach for the collection of modeling and benchmarking data that can be used for predictions of energy performance at a national or urban scale is through classification of the building stock into representative archetypes. Developing such building archetypes is a complex task due to the difficulties associated with gathering detailed geometric and non-geometric data at an urban scale. Although existing databases and projects provide a valuable overview of a building stock, the information about buildings’ physical descriptions are not regularly updated. Moreover, these databases cover only the national top-level archetypes and lack crucial information related to city or district scale building stocks. The use of national scale archetypes requires many assumptions that may not hold true for energy modeling at urban or district scale. This paper proposes a multi-scale (national, city, county and district) archetype development methodology using different data-driven approaches. The methodology consists of following five steps: 1) data collection, 2) segmentation, 3) characterization, 4) quantification, and 5) modeling results. We developed a test case based on the available building stock data of Ireland. The test case used previously developed archetype geometries coupled with the parameters determined by the characterization process to calculate annual energy use (kWh) of buildings at a multiple-scales. The resulting archetypes at national, city, county and district scale are analyzed and compared against one another. The results indicate that significant differences occur in terms of energy modeling results when national scale archetypes are used to simulate the energy performance of buildings at the local scale. These multi-scale building archetypes will aid local authorities and city planners when analyzing energy efficiency and consequently, help to improve sustainable energy policy decisions.enThis is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Energy and Buildings. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Energy and Buildings (202, (2019)) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2019.109364Building archetypesBuilding energy efficiencyUrban building energy modelingBuilding energy performance simulationJournal Article20210.1016/j.enbuild.2019.1093642019-08-15SFI/15/SPP/E3125.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ie/