A review of assessment methods for the urban environment and its energy sustainability to guarantee climate adaptation of future cities

TL;DR

This review discusses the interconnected assessment tools for urban climate, energy demand, and thermal comfort, emphasizing the need for a holistic framework to support climate adaptation and mitigation in future cities.

Contribution

It highlights the fragmented nature of existing assessment tools and advocates for an integrated platform to address urban climate, energy, and comfort challenges comprehensively.

Findings

Existing tools often address only one or two urban aspects.

There is a strong link between biometeorology, architecture, and climate.

A holistic interface is needed for effective urban climate adaptation.

Abstract

The current climate change is calling for drastic reduction of energy demand as well as of greenhouse gases. Besides this, cities also need to adapt to face the challenges related to climate change. Cities, with their complex urban texture and fabric can be represented as a diverse ecosystem that do not have a clear and defined boundary. Multiple tools that have been developed, in the recent years, for assessment of urban climate, building energy demand, the outdoor thermal comfort and the energy systems. In this review, we, however, noted that these tools often address only one or two of these urban planning aspects. There is however an intricate link between them. For instance, the outdoor comfort assessment has showed that there is a strong link between biometeorology and architecture and urban climate. Additionally, to address the challenges of the energy transition, there will be a convergence of the energy needs in the future with an energy nexus regrouping the energy demand of urban areas. It is also highlighted that the uncertainty related to future climatic data makes urban adaptation and mitigation strategies complex to implement and to design given the lack of a comprehensive framework. We thus conclude by suggesting the need for a holistic interface to take into account this multi-dimensional problem. With the help of such a platform a positive loop in urban design can be initiated leading to the development of low carbon cities and/or with the use of blue and green infrastructure to have a positive impact on the mitigation and adaptation strategies.