Estimating Cooling Energy Demand from Building Attributes and Environmental Parameters using 3D City Models

Most of the global population have shifted to urbanization with advancements in technology. With this transition comes the responsibility of applying these technologies to promote sustainable development practice. Since energy demand is highest in the urbanized areas, it is important that proper assessment and management of energy resource is considered in policy-making and urban planning. This study investigated the estimation of cooling energy demand in Iloilo City Proper, Philippines using a 3D city model integrated with building attributes including building functions and year of construction, while also taking into consideration meteorological factors in the area. The proposed method used the application SimStadt2.0, following the German computation standard DINV18599. Building functions and year of construction were extracted from available building attributes data and satellite images respectively, using the free and open-source software QGIS. A CityGML Level of Detail 1 was generated from 3Dfier using building footprints and LiDAR point cloud data, along with the extracted building attributes of the 5,426 buildings. Meteorological data from INSEL 8 were also considered in the estimation of cooling energy demand in SimStadt2.0. Results showed a monthly energy demand of 12.33 kWh to 313,530.08 kWh in the study area. The estimated energy demand values were higher than the standard mean for different building functions in the country, but within the expected range of values for each season. Urban Heat Islands (UHIs), analyzed using Land Surface Temperature (LST) values, also have significant correlation to areas with higher cooling energy demands. However, inconsistencies can imply the need for further investigation.