Development of a PCA-based climatic similarity index to enhance weather file selection criteria for climate-based daylight modelling simulations in tropical climates

Distance-based selection has been the conventional criterion for weather file selections, although this topographically- and meteorologically-agnostic decision may lead to unreliable Climate-Based Daylight Modelling (CBDM) simulation results. To mitigate this risk, this study explores alternative criteria that may be better predictors of weather file proxies for locations within the tropical climate. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and k-means clustering were conducted on screened tropical cl