I am investigating the HVAC needs for different world regions. We would like to investigate different scenarios on how these could change over time. That means we would place a generic residential and office building model in different climate zones. Obviously the requirements for heating / cooling / dehumidification differ very much across the different climates. Some regions typically have no heating at, in Northern Europe cooling is very uncommon, etc. I have the feeling that only looking at average temperatures or HDDs may not be enough. For instance, hot and humid climates like in the US may not be much more hotter (in dry bulb temperature) than in Central Europe, but the higher humidity makes cooling a requirement to obtain reasonable building comfort.

I am familiar with thermal comfort models. However, I am not sure which would be best in an international context and, also, I wonder if there are simpler decision rules, e.g. "x number of hours above y %RH and above z°C".

To summarise:

• What would be a good decision rule for selecting heating / cooling / dehumidification in different world regions?
• Would you use a comfort model and if so which one?
• Do you know of any world maps that illustrates the need for heating / cooling / dehumidification?