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City governments and energy utilities are increasingly focusing on the development of energy efficiency strategies for buildings as a key component in emission reduction plans and energy supply strategies. To support these diverse needs, a new generation of Urban Building Energy Models (UBEM) is currently being developed and validated to estimate citywide hourly energy demands at the building level. However, in order for cities to rely on UBEMs, effective model generation and maintenance workflows are needed based on existing urban data structures. Within this context, the authors collaborated with the Boston Redevelopment Authority to develop a citywide UBEM based on official GIS datasets and a custom building archetype library. Energy models for 83,541 buildings were generated and assigned one of 52 use/age archetypes, within the CAD modelling environment Rhinoceros3D. The buildings were then simulated using the US DOE EnergyPlus simulation program, and results for buildings of the same archetype were crosschecked against data from the US national energy consumption surveys. A district-level intervention combining photovoltaics with demand side management is presented to demonstrate the ability of UBEM to provide actionable information. Lack of widely available archetype templates and metered energy data, were identified as key barriers within existing workflows that may impede cities from effectively applying UBEM to guide energy policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Operational building energy has long been recognized as both a major contributor of as well as an opportunity to save carbon emissions. To do so, one may follow two paths, reduce the energy use in buildings (demand) or provide the required energy in more efficient ways (supply). In the literature, extensive research has been made on both fronts and at different levels of detail resulting in a myriad of tools unique to specific stages in the development timeframe of a district energy project. This manuscript describes a modeling workflow based on a new Rhinoceros-based plugin that combines an Urban Building Energy Model with a network topology optimization and a heat generation scenario model bridging the gap between the planning phase and the design phase. The new plugin builds on the foundation of umi, a Rhino-based link to Radiance and EnergyPlus developed at the MIT Sustainable Design Lab, as an addition to the demand simulation module. A demonstration project shows how the workflow serves as a stepping stone from the design environment of Rhinoceros to the technical environment of TRNSYS, thus enabling a more streamlined process to use different modeling strategies for different purposes, within the same design workflow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life cycle impacts in buildings includes operational carbon for heating, cooling, hot water, ventilation, lighting, on the one hand, and embodied carbon for material supply, production, transport, construction and disassembly, on the other. Improved operational carbon has increased the percentage of embodied carbon in the total life cycle of buildings. Kuwait is looking at enhancing the sustainability of its built environment, as there is an urgent need to expand and build new cities. This research analyses the sustainability of the Middle Eastern built environment in order to provide the most appropriate strategies to respond to this demand. Therefore, this paper looks at different alternatives to the current construction methodologies, such as cement replacement in concrete or rammed earth structural systems. The impact of three envelope and energy upgrades on the whole life cycle environmental performance of a Middle Eastern residential neighborhood is evaluated. Simulations are performed through urban modeling, resulting in a distribution of the embodied and operational impacts of buildings for the different design options. Based on the results showing embodied carbon can be lowered by 200 kg CO2e /m 2 , this paper offers guidelines for building codes and governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]