The rapid urbanisation and the increase of world population underline the need of a new approach in the urban design, based on the energy efficiency and the sustainability of the built environment. When focusing on City Energy Modelling, unlike Building Energy Modelling, each urban simulation engine generally has its own tailor-made data-model: municipalities and other urban information data ad...

With support of GIS tools and Theil index, the spatial variance of urban energy consumption in China was discussed in this paper through the parallel comparison and quantitative analysis of the 30 provincial capital cities of mainland China in 2005, in terms of scale, efficiency and structure. The indicators associated with urban energy consumption show large spatial variance across regions, po...

This paper presents the concept of an interactive and comprehensive platform based on an advanced metering infrastructure for exchanging information on energy consumption (and consequently on energy efficiency) in an urban and industrial environment which can serve as a powerful tool for monitoring progress in the transition toward a low carbon society. The proposed concept aims at supporting e...

Urban green spaces can be intensive water and energy consumers in the cities, particularly scarce regions. Though a very efficient use of such resources is necessary, tools for assessing both consumption efficiency are not available. In this paper, new methodology based on balances developed water-use urban spaces. The proposed balances, adapted from those supply systems, specifically tailored ...

This paper focuses on urban passenger transport eco-efficiency, which can be defined as the production of maximum benefits to society while minimising environmental impacts from urban transport’s inputs of energy and materials. Researchers have intensively studied transport’s varied environmental impacts, particularly through Life Cycle Assessment; this paper argues that primary transport energ...

The EU has set the policy target of reducing energy use by 20% by the year 2020. Therefore, a substantial consumption decrease is needed in built environment sector. Despite the great energy efficiency improvements in households, recent energy consumption data analyses show that these targets will unlikely be reached. The general aim of this study is to point out the need to define new indicato...

Urban environment has undergone many transformations in order to function effectively as society changes. Since the Industrial Revolution, cities have provided extensive industrial areas, high-capacity transport, and a huge quantity of housing and offices. However, the development and expansion of urban areas since 18th century have brought about serious environmental problems as well as effici...

This paper presents the development of an energy and carbon model of existing dwellings and its application to urban housing. The model is used to predict the energy use and CO2 emissions of the housing stock of the city of Leicester, UK, and to estimate the effect of energy efficiency interventions. It is shown that a high level of energy efficiency interventions has the potential to reduce ov...