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A big data modeling framework for evaluating the impact of urban design and constructability on multi-scale city energy usage

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Research Team

Our Motivation:

“In this project, we aim to improve our understanding of how urban design affects city energy consumption across the building and mobility sector, and how these relationships can be modeled effectively. Are there trade-offs between the two sectors and can we avoid them? What is the impact of changes in urban form on energy consumption across different scales, from the block to the city? What do these  findings mean for ‘ideal’ urban design patterns? And how do things change with an increase of vehicle electrification and autonomous or shared mobility?”


 

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Research Contribution

Theoretical: 

A framework that quantitatively links the impacts of different urban planning interventions on building and transportation energy consumption across different scales.


Applied:

Demonstration of the value of a more integrated approach to designing integrated building-mobility-energy systems.

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 Problem

Practical Problem 

Planners, developers, and communities aim to leverage intelligent urban and energy systems planning to lowering urban energy use and corresponding emissions.

Conceptual Problem

The relationships between urban systems and their resulting energy use patterns are not yet fully understood. Example questions include:

• Are there trade-offs between reducing mobility and building energy use?
• How do changes in urban form, e.g. a new or expanded corporate campus, change building and mobility energy use patterns?
• How does vehicle electrification interact with these questions?
• Given all this, how would ‘ideal’ urban design patterns look like, and what is realistic given the status quo?

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Solution

Develop a framework that quantitatively links the impacts of different urban planning interventions on building and transportation energy consumption across different scales.

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Added Value For The Industry

Support the quantification of external impacts/gains of proposed construction
and urban development projects for regulatory and public approval

Support the understanding of interactions between large-scale developments and their urban environment in shaping spatio-temporal mobility and energy consumption patterns

Support the prospective modeling of mobility services

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Cooperation Partner

Logo for SVCE

Silicon Valley Clean Energy
Company (SVCE), USA

 

Icon Timeline

 Timeline

Date

Activity 

Outcome

Year 2020

Previous work:

Modeling the relationship between the built environment and human mobility patterns 

 

Jan. 2021

 

Conference Paper: Modeling aggregate human mobility patterns in cities based on the spatial distribution of local infrastructure

Oct. 2021

 

Completes model (full paper in progress)

Year 2021

Research became awarded: A big modeling framework for evaluating the impact of urban design and constructability on multi-scale city energy usage

 

 

Previous work: Data acquisition of high-resolution building energy data

 

Aug. 2021

Finalized algorithm, developed in cooperation with Silicon Valley Clean Energy Company (SVCE), to enable them to share building-level energy consumption data at high temporal resolution while protecting customer privacy

Data acquired

Nov. 2021 

Start of CIFE Seed Research

 

Year 2022

 

 

Mar. 2022

Extended work on the relationship between the built environment and mobility energy use across scales through a hierarchical, data-driven model based on combining multiple existing dataset in new way

Submitted paper to major journal


Apr. 2022

Initial statistical analysis on SVCE Data

Initial insights on the impact of building and urban design on building energy use from the building scale to the neighborhood scale

Next Steps:

Consolidate insights from mobility and building sectors to integrated framework

 

If you want to participate in the project please reach out to Marco Miotti (mmiotti@stanford.edu)

Research Overview & Progress Report

Relevant Links for this Research