Ten questions on urban building energy modeling

• Published in: Building and environment Vol. 168; no. C; p. 106508
• Main Authors: Hong, Tianzhen, Chen, Yixing, Luo, Xuan, Luo, Na, Lee, Sang Hoon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 15.01.2020; Elsevier BV; Elsevier
• Subjects: Building energy use; Building performance simulation; Buildings; Climate change; Computer applications; Computer simulation; Datasets; Decision making; Energy conservation; Energy consumption; Energy demand; Energy efficiency; Energy modeling; Extreme weather; Greenhouse effect; Greenhouse gases; Optimization; Power efficiency; Questions; Researchers; Retrofitting; Software; Thermal analysis; Urban areas; Urban building energy modeling (UBEM); Urban energy planning; Urban environments; Urban planning; Urban systems; Weather; Workflow; Energy efficiency; Urban systems; Urban energy planning; Urban building energy modeling (UBEM); Building performance simulation; Building energy use
• ISSN: 0360-1323; 1873-684X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2019.106508

Buildings in cities consume up to 70% of all primary energy. To achieve cities’ energy and climate goals, it is necessary to reduce energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions in buildings through energy conservation and efficiency improvements. Computational tools empowered with rich urban datasets can model performance of buildings at the urban scale to provide quantitative insights for stakeholders and inform their decision making on urban energy planning, as well as building energy retrofits at scale, to achieve efficiency, sustainability, and resilience of urban buildings. Designing and operating urban buildings as a group (from a city block to a district to an entire city) rather than as single individuals requires simulation and optimization to account for interactions among buildings and between buildings and their surrounding urban environment, and for district energy systems serving multiple buildings with diverse thermal loads across space and time. When hundreds or more buildings are involved in typical urban building energy modeling (UBEM) to estimate annual energy demand, evaluate design or retrofit options, and quantify impacts of extreme weather events or climate change, it is crucial to integrate urban datasets and UBEM tools in a seamless automatic workflow with cloud or high-performance computing for users including urban planners, designers and researchers. This paper presents ten questions that highlight significant UBEM research and applications. The proposed answers aim to stimulate discussion and provide insights into the current and future research on UBEM, and more importantly, to inspire new and important questions from young researchers in the field. •Urban building energy modeling (UBEM) is an emerging and important field.•Ten significant questions on urban building energy modeling are proposed and discussed.•Advances in UBEM data models, datasets, modeling approaches, simulation tools, and model calibration are presented.•Example applications of UBEM are illustrated.•Main challenges, opportunities and future perspectives of UBEM are discussed.