López Cabeza, Victoria PatriciaDiz Mellado, Eduardo MaríaRivera-Gómez, CarlosGalán-Marín, CarmenSamuelson, Holly2023-05-162023-05-162022López Cabeza, V.P., Diz Mellado, E.M., Rivera-Gómez, C., Galán-Marín, C. y Samuelson, H. (2022). Thermal comfort modelling and empirical validation of predicted air temperaturein hot-summer Mediterranean courtyards. Journal of Building Performance Simulation, 15 (1), 39-61. https://doi.org/10.1080/19401493.2021.2001571.1940-15071940-1493https://hdl.handle.net/11441/146142Courtyards are a passive strategy to improve the energy performance of buildings. However, theaccurate simulation of courtyards’ thermodynamic performance in the early design stage is still chal-lenging, even though there has been an emergence of new methods to assess outdoor simulation.This paper tests a novel workflow using the Ladybug Tools that uses CFD for outdoor temperatureand comfort simulation of courtyards and is suitable for the early stage of building design, compar-ing the results with monitored data and simulated data from ENVI-met. Results show high accuracyin the prediction of temperature from Ladybug Tools with error ranges from 3.8–7.5%, which is lowerthan with ENVI-met. In terms of comfort, the simulated Universal Thermal Climate Index values differby up to 10°C between ENVI-met and the Ladybug Tools. The results show a significant improvementtowards the design of the courtyard in the search for net-zero energy buildings.application/pdf22 p.engAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacionalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/CourtyardMicroclimateOutdoor thermal comfortBuilding simulationLadybugToolsENVI-metinfo:eu-repo/semantics/articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccesshttps://doi.org/10.1080/19401493.2021.2001571