GIS-AWBEM: GIS-based Automated White-Box Building Energy Modeling

Studying urban district energy transitions requires a flexible and detailed building-specific energy performance analysis. This article presents an open-source Geographic Information System (GIS)-based framework for conducting white-box Urban Building Energy Modeling (UBEM) analysis via a bottom-up approach. The proposed methodology uses available geospatial data to construct 3D building envelopes and equip them with detailed physics-based Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems. For each building, both the building envelope and energy system are modeled using the open-source building simulation software EnergyPlus, which is freely available and computationally efficient. The framework is applied to a typical district with 241 buildings in south-west Germany, where its capabilities are showcased by providing dynamic insights into load and HVAC system performance. Three scenarios are studied to: 1) calculate the buildings and entire district demands, 2) simulate the traditional HVAC system comprised of gas-fired boilers and cooling coils, and 3) represent the future HVAC system implementing heat pumps for both heating and cooling purposes. ... mehrIt is concluded that scenario 3, compared to scenario 2, increases the grid dependency by 80.5% and reduces the environmental impacts by 13.9%. Moreover, the reported low computational costs across all scenarios certify the framework applicability for further urban planning and district-scale energy system design.