Interactive energy mapping for effective plans and policies. A user-centered UBEM approach

Abstract

[Abstract] The European Commission published a Renovation Wave Strategy in October 2020 aimed at improving the energy performance of the building stock and to contribute to achieving the ultimate goal of climate neutrality. One of the key principles of this strategy is to make a better use of available funding, thus targeting inefficient buildings and vulnerable areas. The building renovation programmes are channelled through local authorities, which have to identify the eligible areas of the city where building renovation can be incentivized to maximise the returns on the investment. However, cities do not currently have objective instruments to support energy based decisions. Despite the growing interest in urban energy performance in the last decade, few Urban Buildings Energy Models (UBEMs) are actually available to evaluate the energy implications of plans and policies Most of the existing models have one or several of the following limitations: (a) They require time-consuming geometric modelling (b) They rely on building- scale thermodynamic models and hence their applicability is limited to a few blocks (c) They are only based on statistical correlations and do not account for the specific characteristics of buildings and urban fabric and (d) They are targeted to design and planning teams and need to be operated by expert consultants. This paper will describe a novel UBEM approach to adapt and combine thermodynamic and daylighting models with original morphological analytic algorithms to map the energy demand in districts and cities, portraying estimates of current or alternative planning scenarios. The tool will support policymakers to target the most effective energy policies based on the characteristics of the building stock and urban form in each part of the city. The range of applications of this tool is not limited to local renovation plans but they can also support decision making at multiple levels (from buildings to regions). This ongoing research has developed an urban building energy model that takes account of urban morphology, construction specifications and user behaviour thus enabling meaningful analysis of the likely impacts of energy plans and policies at city and regional scale as well as the assessment of individual buildings. It has defined a sound, flexible and scalable energy model structure that incorporates the key variables that influence building energy use for heating, cooling and lighting, exploiting current datasets and facilitating a gradual integration of innovative methods and updated data.). The next stages of the research will focus on the model’s integration into an online digital platform, to display dynamic and interactive urban energy maps. These maps will show estimates of the current demand of the building stock as well as the potential savings from building renovation interventions. They are aimed at a general audience as well as to inform local plans and policies.