Browsing by Author "Mabe, Lara"
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Item Automatised and georeferenced energy assessment of an Antwerp district based on cadastral data(2018-08-15) Oregi, Xabat; Hermoso, Nekane; Prieto, Iñaki; Izkara, Jose Luis; Mabe, Lara; Sismanidis, Panagiotis; Tecnalia Research & Innovation; PLANIFICACIÓN ENERGÉTICA; LABORATORIO DE TRANSFORMACIÓN URBANAMunicipalities play a key role in supporting Europe's energy transition towards a low-carbon economy. However, there is a lack of tools to allow municipalities to easily formulate a detailed energy vision for their city. Nevertheless, most municipalities have access to georeferenced cartographic and cadastre information, including that on basic building characteristics. This article describes an innovative method to calculate and display the current hourly thermal energy demand for each building in a district based on basic cartography, cadastre, and degree-day values. The method is divided into two main blocks: (1) input data processing to obtain geometric information (e.g. geolocation, building and facades’ dimensions) and semantic data (e.g. use, year of construction), and (2) district energy assessment to calculate the thermal energy demand using data obtained in block 1. The proposed method has been applied and tested in the historical district of Antwerp. The reliability and thoroughness of the results obtained using the method are demonstrated based on two different validations: (1) comparison of the results with those calculated using an existing dynamic energy simulation tool, and (2) comparison of the results with the real gas consumption of a partial sector of the selected district. The first validation shows that the average difference between the two methodologies is less than 11% for the heating demand, less than 11% for the cooling demand, and less than 15% for the domestic hot water demand. The second validation shows a 24% difference between the real natural gas consumption and that obtained by new methodology. Finally, the results have been presented to the municipality of Antwerp, which plans to use the method to design the district heating expansion within the city centre. Furthermore, sensitivity assessment was used to determine the relevance of the main input parameters considered in this method, such as the base temperature, energy system schedules, window-to-wall ratio, and solar gains.Item A catalogue of energy conservation measures (ECM) and a tool for their application in energy simulation models(2020-05) Costa, Gonçal; Sicilia, Álvaro; Oregi, Xabat; Pedrero, Juan; Mabe, Lara; PLANIFICACIÓN ENERGÉTICAOne of the primary objectives in the refurbishment of buildings is to identify the best combination of Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs) in terms of energy efficiency. The current Building Energy Performance (BEP) simulation tools require a great deal of time and effort because data from multiple sources must be properly combined (e.g., building/urban models, ECM catalogues, weather condition files) in order to create energy simulation models. In addition, the process of manually setting up each scenario in order to obtain the most optimal solution is also a demanding and time-consuming task. The growing presence of the Building Information Model/Modelling (BIM) technologies in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry, combined with the new capabilities to link and integrate data using Semantic Web technologies, is presented as an alternative to automate the simulation process. In this article, we present a system that takes advantage of the capabilities of these technologies to integrate ECM data into BEP simulation models in an automated way. The system is composed of a catalogue of ECM measures described in Resource Description Framework (RDF) and a software component that facilitates their application in the models. The system has been developed in the context of OptEEmAL, a research project aimed at creating a web platform to facilitate building simulations at a district scale. The applicability of the system is demonstrated in a case study of a district-scale project.Item Evaluation of different refurbishment or improvement strategies to reduce the environmental impact of University campuses(International Building Performance Simulation Association, 2022) Arias, Alba; León, Iñigo; Oregi, Xabat; Marieta, Cristina; Mabe, Lara; Saelens, Dirk; Laverge, Jelle; Boydens, Wim; Helsen, Lieve; PLANIFICACIÓN ENERGÉTICAOver the past few years, urban planners and architects have searched for solutions to improve the performance of urban projects in terms of environmental impact, life quality and socio-economic problems. NEST is an agile and fast tool developed to assess this environmental impact (baseline scenarios and improvements hypotheses) at the district level by a life cycle analysis. The authors of this publication have used NEST in different research projects and have studied different baseline scenarios and evaluated improvement cases. The article presents a summary of the evolution of the research carried out, explaining each case study and the general conclusions obtained. It also presents the current research project focused on the utilisation of renewable energy sources in the campuses in order to reduce their environmental impact.Item A Multi-objective Harmony Search Algorithm for Optimal Energy and Environmental Refurbishment at District Level Scale(Springer Singapore, 2017) Manjarres, Diana; Mabe, Lara; Oregi, Xabat; Landa-Torres, Itziar; Arrizabalaga, Eneko; Del Ser, Javier; Tecnalia Research & Innovation; IA; PLANIFICACIÓN ENERGÉTICANowadays municipalities are facing an increasing commitment regarding the energy and environmental performance of cities and districts. The multiple factors that characterize a district scenario, such as: refurbishment strategies’ selection, combination of passive, active and control measures, the surface to be refurbished and the generation systems to be substituted will highly influence the final impacts of the refurbishment solution. In order to answer this increasing demand and consider all above-mentioned district factors, municipalities need optimisation methods supporting the decision making process at district level scale when defining cost-effective refurbishment scenarios. Furthermore, the optimisation process should enable the evaluation of feasible solutions at district scale taking into account that each district and building has specific boundaries and barriers. Considering these needs, this paper presents a multi-objective approach allowing a simultaneous environmental and economic assessment of refurbishment scenarios at district scale. With the aim at demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed approach, a real scenario of Gros district in the city of Donostia-San Sebastian (North of Spain) is presented. After analysing the baseline scenario in terms of energy performance, environmental and economic impacts, the multi-objective Harmony Search algorithm has been employed to assess the goal of reducing the environmental impacts in terms of Global Warming Potential (GWP) and minimizing the investment cost obtaining the best ranking of economic and environmental refurbishment scenarios for the Gros district.Item The opportunity for smart city projects at municipal scale: Implementing a positive energy district in Zorrozaurre(2021) Martín, Cristina; Castillo-Calzadilla, Tony; Zabala, Kristina; Arrizabalaga, Eneko; Hernández, Patxi; Mabe, Lara; López, José Ramón; Casado, Jesús Ma; Santos, Ma Nélida; Guardo, Jordán; Molinete, Begoña; PLANIFICACIÓN ENERGÉTICAThe urgency of climate change is demanding new urban energy transition processes that will be accelerated by the implementation of innovative urban solutions. This paper proposes a three-step methodology to encompass the energy transition in cities. Firstly, the design of urban spaces in accordance to Positive Energy District (PED) concept is defining a very ambitious objective that will lead the development and implementation of innovative urban approaches. Secondly, the implementation of Urban City Labs is proposed for testing and demonstrating urban innovations at real scale as reasonable approach for consolidated urban landscapes. Thirdly, energy transition is demanding new governance mechanisms where top-down and bottom-up perspectives are continually combined and harmonized. ATELIER H2020 is accelerating the demonstration of this methodology at the recently defined PED in Zorrozaurre (Bilbao, Basque Country).Item Sensitivity assessment of a district energy assessment characterisation model based on cadastral data(2018-08) Oregi, Xabat; Hermoso, Nekane; Arrizabalaga, Eneko; Mabe, Lara; Munoz, Inigo; Tecnalia Research & Innovation; PLANIFICACIÓN ENERGÉTICASustainable energy planning of cities is a complex problem which should address the comparative analysis of alternative future energy scenarios form a social, economic and environmental point of view. In this regard, the development of methods and tools to allow building energy demand characterization of large areas is becoming one of the main challenges in this field. New studies focused on the energy diagnosis of districts and cities with different location and climatic conditions are necessary to calibrate current methods and assumptions, as well as for the replication of the validated method in other cities around the globe. This paper provides a comparative analysis of the results obtained during the sensitivity assessment of a specific tool for the building energy demand characterization at city scale developed by Tecnalia in the European research project PlanHeat for four different European cities. During this calibration process, the influence of the main parameters that can be adjusted within the tool is evaluated and discussed. Results show that the relevance of adjusting properly each parameter varies depending on the climate zone of the city evaluated and other characteristics of the conjunction of buildings included in each district.Item SOFIAS – Software for life-cycle assessment and environmental rating of buildings(2016-06-29) Oregi, Xabat; Tenorio, Jose Antonio; Gazulla, Cristina; Zabalza, Ignacio; Cambra, David; Leao, Susana; Mabe, Lara; Otero, Sheila; Raigosa, Juliana; Oregi Isasi, X.; Tecnalia Research & Innovation; PLANIFICACIÓN ENERGÉTICAThis paper describes the development process of a new software tool, called SOFIAS (Software for a Sustainable Architecture), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivenes. Following CEN/TC 350 standard on environmental assessment of buildings, the tool aims at assisting building professionals on reducing the life-cycle environmental impact through the design of new buildings and the refurbishment of existing ones. In addition, SOFIAS provides a rating system based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. This paper explains the innovative aspects of this software, the working methodology and the different type of results that can be obtained using SOFIAS.Item Sustainability assessment of three districts in the city of Donostia through the NEST simulation tool(2016-11-01) Oregi, Xabat; Pousse, Maxime; Mabe, Lara; Escudero, Alexandre; Mardaras, Iker; Tecnalia Research & Innovation; PLANIFICACIÓN ENERGÉTICANowadays, urbanists are facing increasing demands regarding the performance of urban development projects in terms of environment, quality of life and socio-economic issues. In order to address these increasing demands, actors involved in urban development projects need tools capable of assessing their impacts. These tools should also enable the comparison of all potential scenarios. Taking into account these needs, Nobatek and Tecnalia have developed NEST (Neighbourhood Evaluation for Sustainable Territories), which is one of the first tools that allows for a simultaneous environmental, economic and social analysis at the district scale, with a life-cycle perspective. Using NEST, the authors of this work carried out an environmental and social evaluation of three districts in the city of Donostia, in the framework of the Essai Urbain research project. The evaluation first consisted of analysing baseline environmental impacts of the three districts. Then, with the objective of reducing environmental impacts and increasing social well-being, the authors proposed several refurbishment scenarios for the studied districts, focusing on energy issues. The study was performed in close collaboration with the city of Donostia, which enabled the identification and selection of the most relevant scenarios from an environmental standpoint. Moreover, the NEST software has caught the attention of the project's stakeholders regarding environmental issues. Finally, NEST seems to be an interesting alternative in accounting for sustainable development issues from the early stages of urban development projects.Item Two-Stage Multi-Objective Meta-Heuristics for Environmental and Cost-Optimal Energy Refurbishment at District Level(2019) Manjarres, Diana; Mabe, Lara; Oregi, Xabat; Landa-Torres, Itziar; Tecnalia Research & Innovation; IA; PLANIFICACIÓN ENERGÉTICAEnergy efficiency and environmental performance optimization at the district level are following an upward trend mostly triggered by minimizing the Global Warming Potential (GWP) to 20% by 2020 and 40% by 2030 settled by the European Union (EU) compared with 1990 levels. This paper advances over the state of the art by proposing two novel multi-objective algorithms, named Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) and Multi-Objective Harmony Search (MOHS), aimed at achieving cost-effective energy refurbishment scenarios and allowing at district level the decision-making procedure. This challenge is not trivial since the optimisation process must provide feasible solutions for a simultaneous environmental and economic assessment at district scale taking into consideration highly demanding real-based constraints regarding district and buildings’ specific requirements. Consequently, in this paper, a two-stage optimization methodology is proposed in order to reduce the energy demand and fossil fuel consumption with an affordable investment cost at building level and minimize the total payback time while minimizing the GWP at district level. Aimed at demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed two-stage multi-objective approaches, this work presents simulation results at two real district case studies in Donostia-San Sebastian (Spain) for which up to a 30% of reduction of GWP at district level is obtained for a Payback Time (PT) of 2–3 years.