GIS-Based Energy Consumption Model at the Urban Scale for the Building Stock

Energy efficient buildings’ issue integrated into the district and CO2 emission reduction strategies and policies are one of the main concerns in the European Union (EU). In order to achieve an effective impact, instead of just concentrating on the improvement in terms of energy efficiency to one particular building, this approach requires challenges to be solved in an entire municipality or an entire district. Accordingly, it is significant understanding the comprehensive residential building stock models in the urban environment able to promote a sustainable energy planning. In this paper we describe a new methodology based on two different modelling approaches top-down and bottom-up with the aim to evaluate the buildings energy consumption model of a municipality. This methodology is mainly based on information that is already available on building stock from the literature and data collection (i.e., technical department of the municipality, web, energy auditors and others) which is later transferred into the Geographic information system (GIS). Into this, in future studies GIS platform provides the information on energy performance in the whole city as well as creating the urban energy maps for assessing retrofitting scenarios and support decision making for policy implementation to achieve sustainable urban planning. This study is part of an ongoing Smart City research study, national cluster project named Zero Energy Buildings in Smart Urban Districts (EEB) and is tested in a medium sized town in the Piedmont region (Italy), and the results are discussed.