Assessing Energy Profiles of Urban Neighborhoods: A Streamlined GIS-Based Approach

Abstract

(no german abstract) The present contribution illustrates recent developments within the research project E_Profil. This project targets the development of a toolbox for the exploration of neighborhood profiles in terms of socio-cultural, urban development, and energy-related aspects. Thereby, the major goal is to facilitate an energy and resource efficient and environmentally responsible midand long-term development of Austrian cities. The specific contribution described in this paper illustrates a simple methodology for the efficient use of GIS-data toward the derivation of urban development strategies in view of energy usage. In a first step, the geometry data of one (or multiple) specific urban neighborhoods is semantically enriched by additional information (building period, energy status of the buildings, etc.). Such data can be usually found in different archives of the corresponding city or can (at least partly) be collected in-situ. Subsequently, this enriched database must be further processed to form input data bundles, which can be used to derive key performance indicators of individual buildings, selected subsets of the total building stock of the neighborhood or the overall building stock. Based on these procedures, impact analysis of different mid- and long-term transformation policies regarding the energy performance of the neighborhood(s) can be performed in a convenient fashion. This contribution illustrates the approach and delivers a proof of concept based on two urban districts of the city of Linz, Austria.

The present contribution illustrates recent developments within the research project E_Profil. This project targets the development of a toolbox for the exploration of neighborhood profiles in terms of socio-cultural, urban development, and energy-related aspects. Thereby, the major goal is to facilitate an energy and resource efficient and environmentally responsible midand long-term development of Austrian cities. The specific contribution described in this paper illustrates a simple methodology for the efficient use of GIS-data toward the derivation of urban development strategies in view of energy usage. In a first step, the geometry data of one (or multiple) specific urban neighborhoods is semantically enriched by additional information (building period, energy status of the buildings, etc.). Such data can be usually found in different archives of the corresponding city or can (at least partly) be collected in-situ. Subsequently, this enriched database must be further processed to form input data bundles, which can be used to derive key performance indicators of individual buildings, selected subsets of the total building stock of the neighborhood or the overall building stock. Based on these procedures, impact analysis of different mid- and long-term transformation policies regarding the energy performance of the neighborhood(s) can be performed in a convenient fashion. This contribution illustrates the approach and delivers a proof of concept based on two urban districts of the city of Linz, Austria.