Streamlining Building Energy Modelling Using Open Access Databases—A Methodology towards Decarbonisation of Residential Buildings in Sweden

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The following revision is required:

1. There is a lack of literature review and the research gaps are not clear.

2. Although Figure 1 demonstrates the workflow, the actual implementation is not evidenced.

3. There is no comparison to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed prediction model.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper proposes a method to develop building energy models using an open database. The method would be quite useful to reduce energy use and associate carbon emissions of buildings.

1 There are a number of issues in spelling and grammar in this paper. Please check carefully the whole paper. Some words begin with the capital letter, which are quite odd. Please correct these spellings.

2 “Error! Reference source not found”. The error messages appear several times. Please correct these errors.

3 The authors state “The thermal zone could be defined by living units, by each floor or by one single zone per building”. It is unclear how to apply these three rules to the zoning of the buildings. If there is only one zone in each floor for a large building, there may be a significant discrepancy for simulation results.  

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The study meets current tendencies of building energy renovation. The Swedish context used to operationalize the methodology provides prerequisites for application of it in Northern part of Europe and beyond.

Specific Comments

1)      Consider word ‘Resi-den-Tial‘ in the title of the paper.

2)      It seems not reasonable that Chapter 1 contains one sub-chapter. Thus, it is recommended avoid sub-chapter 1.1 Scope; the text from this sub-chapter should be moved to chapter 1 Introduction as the last section. Also, the text from this sub-chapter should be revised in the following manner „This study intends describing methodology...“.  Usually, the review of literatures sources is finalized by defining the aim, goals and scope of the research.  

3)      Revise the whole text of the manuscript in order to provide links to Figures and Tables (marked in bold).

4)      Conclusions should be more concrete and contain not only text, but also numerical information from the chapter Results. Present text in the chapter Conclusions fits better to the chapter Discussion.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The revision has addressed all my concerns.