An Integrated Multi-Criteria Spatial Decision Support System for Urban Energy Scenarios

Reducing energy consumption in the built environment sector, towards low-carbon cities requires a supportive planning process. In this regard, the use of appropriate tools and methods for addressing complex interactions of Urban Integrated Energy Planning (UIEP) processes is needed. However, the choice among UIEP scenarios is extensively based on multi-actors and multi-criteria aspects. The research, therefore, deals with the integration of participative decisional processes into UIEP by organizing different focus groups involving relevant stakeholders. This study aims at developing a new Multi-Criteria Spatial Decision Support System (MC-SDSS) tool to support UIEP in real-time processes. The developed MC-SDSS is an interactive energetic plug-in of GIS environment using CommunityViz. The architecture design of the tool consists of four major parts: (i) creation of GIS-database (ii) modelling of Energy Interactive Impact Assessment (iii) modelling of Suitability Analysis (iv) defining of energy retrofitting scenarios using many presentation features including maps, alerts and charts. The new MC-SDSS is applied to a case-study, a medium-sized city of the metropolitan area of Turin (IT), in order to facilitate the dynamic decisional process for stakeholders who can ask “what-if” questions and visualize “if-then” scenarios. Accordingly, two sets of retrofitting decision scenarios, export-oriented and stakeholder-oriented, are developed through a participative workshop.