CitySim Guide : Urban Energy Modelling

The proposed work is a dynamic guide, particularly designed for students, researchers and planners, to the tool CitySim. CitySim is an urban energy modelling tool, which belongs to the energy simulation software family. Its peculiar feature is to consider the simulation scene as a complex urban environment, where the energy fluxes interact with each other. Currently, several works (peer reviewed journals and conferences articles) were already performed in order to present the main features of the tool, as well as the physical model behind it, but a complete guide, able to fully describe the tool, is currently missed. Due to the rising interest on the urban energy modelling domain, and its enormous potential as political instrument to manage the energy fluxes within the urban environment, the proposed work represents an essential instrument of support for researchers, students and planners. The proposed book, named “CitySim Guide. Urban energy modelling” is a guide to the software CitySim, able to explain, step by step, how to use this software. The guide presents both the software CitySim, as well as the user graphical interface CitySim Pro. This work is subdivided into three main parts: i) an introduction, with the input data and tools required to create the CitySim model, ii) the physical models behind the tool, the graphical user interface, and iii) a real case study in the city of Torino (Italy). In the introduction, all the required input data to create the CitySim model are presented, as well as the software tools that will be used, showing their role and the way they are integrated within the CitySim features. When introducing the tools, the downloading and installation procedure will be also shown. In the second part, the description of core of the tool are explained, from the buildings features (e.g. the physical properties of the envelope, the renewable energy systems, the occupants behaviors, etc.) to the outdoor surfaces properties (e.g. albedo, thermal conductivity, evapotranspiration, etc.). In the end, a detailed description of the results is reported. In the third part, the case study of a district in the city of Turin (Italy) is described from the processing of input data, to the final phase of the results. The last part is quite important in order to understand the tool: the set-up of the model, as well as the results are presented in detail, providing an important instrument to the users, which are able to reproduce the exercise. The proposed work is an important instrument for the teaching activities: it will be used both in the Politecnico of Torino, as well as in the EPFL of Lausanne, as support to the courses in the Bachelor and Master level of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Territorial, Urban, Environmental and Landscape Planning, as well as for the Master Thesis and the semester projects. Additionally, as evident from the references provided in the end of the work, CitySim is an important instrument, well used in the academic world. Consequently, the guide has a strong potential to be used worldwide, by researchers in the field of the urban energy modelling.