Urban Abacus of Building Energy Performances: a methodological approach

Abstract

This paper presents a methodological approach to develop the tool “Urban Abacus of Building Energy performances (Abaco URbano Energetico degli Edifci – AUREE)” for supporting the renovation and energy efficiency enhancement of urban building heritage. The AUREE tool will be based on a Web – GIS GeoBlog portal with some customized interfaces aimed to share the knowledge on urban building heritage and promote the participation of the stakeholders of the urban community. The tool improves citizen and stakeholders awareness on building energy efficiency issues and facilitates the linkage between demand and offer for building companies services via the integration of two main elements: the first is a knowledge layer that represents the actual state of the energy performance of urban building heritage and the second is a spatial based Abacus of the more common building characteristics (structures, plants, uses, ..) and energy retrofitting and renovation technologies. After a touch on the theoretical context, this paper presents a summary of the AUREE general framework and focuses on the methodological approach of the Urban Abacus. The data structure integrates an Urban Building Energy Model (UBEM) in order to support on the energy retrofitting scenario analysis at the level of single building and also for a group of them (city block, district, city). At the end of the paper the furthers research steps have been pointed