This report aims to identify suitable zones in Montenegro for green building projects by considering natural factors like climate and landscape, rather than just construction costs. The author analyzes climate data on temperature and precipitation to identify areas with moderate, stable temperatures and sufficient rainfall. Slope and aspect are also analyzed using elevation data, as steep slopes and poor solar exposure increase building challenges and costs. The goal is to provide a preliminary sketch of potential green building zones in Montenegro to guide developers towards more natural, cost-effective locations.

1. Siting Potential Green Building Zones in Montenegro
Andrew Krueger
May 15, 2009
CP 204C
Situation: Overall Problem: Project Goals:
Montenegro, a country in Southeast Europe, recently Current proposals for green building in Montenegro only consider bottom The aim of this report is to draw attention to some natural factors, such as climate and
independent of Serbia, is rapidly pursing green building as a line costs such as materials and construction. However, the inherent climate landscape, when considering green building sites in Montenegro. Hopefully by using
means of environmental investment and capital both internally and/or natural features of building sites is not currently considered into the suitability analysis, a rough sketch of possible green building zones will emerge and point
and as a means to European integration and ascension into the equation of most new green building projects outside of immediate building builders and investors towards the most natural zones for such development.
European Union. costs.
Specific Project Problems and Solutions:
Data Acquisition & Implementation: Climate Suitability Analysis: Slope and Aspect:
One of the most challenging parts of modeling foreign countries is data acquisition. Two main factors which play a large role in green building are temperature and precipitation. Montenegro is an incredibly mountainous country (Figure 1 & 2). While it possesses a small flat plain
This is especially true of smaller less developed countries, and even more so for a Precipitation is important, because if an area receives moderate to high rainfall throughout the year and near its capital which stretches out from Lake Scutari, most of the country is littered with mountain
possesses the means to harvest that rainfall for use, it can become self sustaining to an extent, relieving peaks which soar to 2,200 meters at their maximum. Both the slope created by these elevations as well
country which has only been independent for less than three years. Thus a major the water system of pressure and lessening the need for expensive water transmission. Temperature as the aspect of those slopes are important natural factors in siting green building. High slopes
challenge lay in acquiring data and according it to other data into a meaningful and is important for a variety of reasons. Zones with moderate temperatures do not require near as much (Figure 3) not only affect construction costs and safety, but they also make issues such as energy and
comprehensible model. For the purposes of this study, a few key data sets were used: heating or cooling throughout the year, if at all. A comfortable outside air temperature throughout the water transmission more costly and create a higher impacts and carbon footprints for most buildings
year as well as low fluctuations to that temperature on a daily basis are important for passive heating lifecycles. Aspect (Figure 4) can be incredibly important for potential solar energy installation as well as
and cooling and can significantly lower building costs in addition to being beneficial to occupants and passive heating and day lighting.
WorldClim database (http://www.worldclim.org/) the environment.
--Climate data
In the case of precipitation, Montenegro has fairly abundant resources. Figures 1 and 2 show the Elevation (Meters)
UC Berkeley gData (http://biogeo.berkeley.edu/bgm/gdata.php) annual precipitation and precipitation during the driest three months of the year. All of Montenegro
--Montenegro administrative boundaries receives at least 1000 mm of rain a year (40 in.) and at least 133 mm (5 in.) in its driest quarter. Both of
these amounts are robust enough to consider green building viable in terms of precipitation.
USGS Seamless database (http://seamless.usgs.gov/index.php) Figures 3 and 4 represent annual mean temperature and temperature seasonality, or the standard
--SRTM Finished 3 arc sec satellite data deviation between seasonal temperatures. Both of these overlays were created first by reclassifying
the raster grids from which they were received into the categories shown. They were then converted
World Gazetteer (http://world-gazetteer.com/) into their present form of vector polygons. The green zone of both images reflect the reasoning stated
--Gazetteer of Montenegrin cities above that a moderate temperature with little fluctuation throughout the year is ideal for green
building. Thus 10 to 15.5 degrees Celsius and 5.6 - 6.5 standard deviations of temperature seasonality
All data used was transformed (if not already in that state) to the WGS 1984 datum and are selected as ideals for this analysis.
projected into UTM 33N. WorldClim data was imported as rasterized ESRI GRIDs and Annual Precipitation Precipitation of Annual Mean Temperature Seasonality
converted to shapefile polygons so that they could be intersected with each other for Driest Quarter Temperature Figure 1 Figure 2
the analysis. Montenegro’s gazetteer data was copied into an excel file and then
georeferenced by lat/long coordinates onto other layers. UC Berkeley’s gData already Running a surface analysis of the TIN model created above from point data provided the following slope
came in vector shapefile polygon form and did not need any conversion other than and aspect images. For building purposes, all slopes over 30 degrees were to be completely avoided for
projection. The elevation data which was used to create the TIN of Montenegro and their steep gradient (Figure 3). In the case of aspect, the most desirable facing was South, Southeast, or
then the subsequent surface analyses of slope and aspect was downloaded as a Southwest, which have all been aggregated below in Figure 4 to simply “South.” Figure 5 shows a raster
based overlay of Figure 3 and 4 to present land which contains both a southerly aspect and a slope
series of geotiffs from the USGS seamless site. It was then converted into point data gradient below 30 degrees.
and stitched together while clipping it with the administrative boundaries of Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4
Montenegro. Once all of the point data had been stitched together, the TIN was built.
Figure 5 below represents the synthesis of the four images above. It was created using a vector inter-
sect to demonstrate areas that receive appropriate rainfall while also maintaining mild temperatures
throughout the year.
End Result Model Zone of Climate Opportunity
The final model (Figure 1) is a synthesis of the Zone of Climate Opportunity (Figure 5 under Climate) and the
Slope/Aspect Synthesis (Figure 5 under Slope). It was created using a vector intersect between the two
shapefiles. It shows opportunity zones where passive lighting and solar energy possibilities can be taken
advantage of on low slopes inside of year-round, stable, moderate climate zones where heating and cooling
needs are minimal. Figure 2, shown below, is an intersect of Montenegrin cities which fall inside of the
opportunity zone of Figure 1. Because most building development takes place within urbanized zones, these
cities, towns, and villages would be ideal places to site or locate possible green buildings.
Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5
Figure 5
Limitations and Avenues for further study:
This analysis has been by no means exhaustive in the sense of criteria included or modeling structure. While precipitation, temperature, slope, and aspect are four of the easiest (and
most important in the case of temperature and precipitation) components of green building natural factors to chart, they are but a small amount of overall data within the complex-
ity of climate structures and geographic independency within microclimates and climate specific zones. This analysis was meant to give a cursory glance at a small country like Mon-
tenegro’s relatively concentrated zones of a few particular climactic and natural features, but not to be the sole impetus for green building. As has already been stated, building and
materials costs generally fuel those decisions anyway. Scale and data resolution is also another major concern for this study. While some of the data has a decent resolution, we are
Figure 2 still viewing an entire country and much of the complexity of the model on the ground of an actual building site is likely to be lost at this scale. In addition, the resolution of the data
Figure 1 was not all uniform, so all of the combining and intersecting of different data is likely to disrupt some of the statistical significance of the initial data from its output.