Urban Building Energy Modeling (UBEM) Tools: A State-of-the-Art Review of bottom-up physics-based approaches

TL;DR

This review compares bottom-up physics-based Urban Building Energy Modeling tools, highlighting their differences, challenges in adoption, and future needs to support sustainable city development.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of UBEM tools from a user perspective and discusses barriers and future directions for their development.

Findings

Major differences between UBEM tools identified.

Barriers include lack of standardization and data collection procedures.

Future development should focus on standardization and user needs.

Abstract

Regulations corroborate the importance of retrofitting existing building stocks or constructing new energy efficient district. There is, thus, a need for modeling tools to evaluate energy scenarios to better manage and design cities, and numerous methodologies and tools have been developed. Among them, Urban Building Energy Modeling (UBEM) tools allow the energy simulation of buildings at large scales. Choosing an appropriate UBEM tool, balancing the level of complexity, accuracy, usability, and computing needs, remains a challenge for users. The review focuses on the main bottom-up physics-based UBEM tools, comparing them from a user-oriented perspective. Five categories are used: (i) the required inputs, (ii) the reported outputs, (iii) the exploited workflow, (iv) the applicability of each tool, and (v) the potential users. Moreover, a critical discussion is proposed focusing on interests and trends in research and development. The results highlighted major differences between UBEM tools that must be considered to choose the proper one for an application. Barriers of adoption of UBEM tools include the needs of a standardized ontology, a common three dimensional city model, a standard procedure to collect data, and a standard set of test cases. This feeds into future development of UBEM tools to support cities' sustainability goals.