GHG App User feedback Developer Bio
Urban Digital Twin for accounting building operational greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
Abstract
Several nations have taken a stance to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in their industrial processes and operations. Furthermore, these nations have committed to achieving carbon neutrality goals within a short duration. However, accounting for emissions requires technical support in the form of tools and applications that can prove use cases for effective city management. Urban Digital Twins (UDTs) integrate multiple disciplines to improve city system efficiency. Nevertheless, UDTs that explore decarbonisation initiatives for cities are limited, as the applications restrict themselves to the building level and have minimum access to authoritative 3D data at the city scale. We propose a methodology to build a UDT platform using a bottom-up integrated 3D city energy dataset based on OpenStreetMap and local public data portals in Singapore. Local datasets are used to gather building type, completion year, and energy consumption data. A linear equation is used to calculate the building’s operational GHG emissions based on energy modelling and the dataset. Each building is assigned a Singapore Region, Planning Area, and Subzone, this information allows city-scale analyses and data exploration. An interactive web map application (GHG App) with User Experience (UX) is developed for rapid heterogeneous data streaming. The UDT platform has a query system with three input scrollbars for quick access to the information—Planning Area, Built Year, and Building Typology. The UDT dashboard generates charts and visualisations based on GHG emissions calculation output. New scenarios such as low/high energy use and low GWP refrigerants in the future are created on top of the baseline (current energy use and technology). By using various interactive what-if scenarios for future scenarios, the UDT use case demonstration will help stakeholders develop GHG emission reduction and carbon-neutral strategies. The research provides a guideline to develop UDT applications around the world without or with limited authoritative open 3D datasets.
Academic Conference Papers and Journal Articles:
- Article published in Energy and Buildings Journal - in a special issue - Challenges, Solutions, and Methods for the Energy Transition in the Existing Housing Stock. Alva, P., Mosteiro-Romero, M., Miller, C., & Stouffs, R. (2024). “Mitigating operational greenhouse gas emissions in ageing residential buildings using an Urban Digital Twin dashboard”, Volume 322, 2024, 114681,ISSN 0378-7788,DOI.
- Presentation of paper at Accelerated Design: ‘CAADRIA 2024’ - 29th Annual International Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research (CAADRIA) in Asia, hosted by SUTD, Singapore from 20-26 April 2024. Alva, P., Mosteiro-Romero, M., & Stouffs, R. (2024). “Estimating operational greenhouse gas emissions in the Built Environment using an Urban Digital Twin: Sustainable city management tool for decarbonisation of cities”.URL.
- Presentation of paper at HUMAN-CENTRIC: ‘CAADRIA 2023’ - 28th Annual International Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research (CAADRIA) in Asia, hosted by Faculty of Architecture, CEPT University, India from 18-24 March 2023. Alva P., Mosteiro-Romero M., Pei, W., Bartolini, A., Yuan, C., and Stouffs R. (2023). “Bottom-up Approach for Creating an Urban Digital Twin Platform and Use Cases - A city energy system dataset visualisation and query”.DOI.
- Presentation of paper at POST-CARBON: ‘CAADRIA 2022’ - 27th Annual International CAADRIA Conference organised by The University of Sydney, UTS and UNSW, 9 - 15 April 2022. Alva P., Mosteiro-Romero M., Miller C., and Stouffs R. (2022). “Digital twin-based resilience evaluation of district-scale archetypes: A COVID-19 scenario case study using a university campus pilot”. DOI.
- Presentation of paper at the 7th annual ‘Smart Data & Smart Cities’ and 17th ‘3D GeoInfo’ conference - jointly held in Sydney, Australia, 18-21 October 2022. Alva, P., Biljecki, F., and Stouffs, R. (2022). USE CASES FOR DISTRICT-SCALE URBAN DIGITAL TWINS. International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, XLVIII-4/W4-2022, 5–12, DOI, 2022.
- Full paper published at ‘Passive and Low Energy Architecture’ - PLEA 2022 conference, Santiago de Chile. Mosteiro-Romero, M., Alva, P., Miller, C., and Stouffs, R. (2022). “Towards occupant-driven district energy system operation: A digital twin platform for energy resilience and occupant well-being”.
Posters/presentations at Symposiums and Exhibitions:
- Oral Presentation, Panel discussion and Poster Exhibition at the Urban Solutions & Sustainability R&D Congress, 4-5th October 2023, Science of Cities Symposium Sessions, Panel 2: Science of Decarbonising Cities. Topic: A Global Bottom-up Approach to create Urban Digital Twins (UDT): Mitigating Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions. URL.
- Exhibition booth set-up at the NUS College of Design and Engineering (CDE) Industry Day, 29th September 2023. An event to bring together experts from industry and academia, Industry Day explored and discussed sustainable solutions for critical issues facing our planet. Interactive tool demonstration - “An Urban Digital Twin Approach to System Resilience”. URL.
- Research work with Future Cities Laboratory Global featured at Venice Biennale 2023, as part of the exhibition Time Space Existence by the ECC (European Cultural Centre), Palazzo Mora, Italy.
- Poster presentation at CREATE Symposium, 10th July 2023, Science of Sustainable Cities. Title: “A global bottom-up approach to create Urban Digital Twins: Mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions”.
- Poster presentation at ‘World Cities Summit 2022’ - Liveable and Sustainable Cities: Emerging Stronger, 31 July – 3 August 2022, Singapore.
- Presented at the NUS-SUTD PhD Symposium in Architecture, Design Computing and Engineering: Parallel Session 4, May 20th, 2022. The Symposium is an annual event jointly hosted by the Department of Architecture (DoA) at NUS and the Architecture and Sustainable Design Pillar (ASD) at SUTD.
- Poster presentation at SIMAUD 2022 conference, San Diego, California, USA. Mosteiro-Romero, M., Alva, P., Chong, A., Miller, C., and Stouffs, R., 2022. “A digital twin platform for district energy simulation and evaluation”.
- Presentation of research work at Diversity in strategies among regions, Climate & Cities virtual conference (International Universities Climate Alliance), on the 28th and 29th October 2021, a seminar session hosted by National University of Singapore. Title: Digital twin-based resilience evaluation of district-scale archetypes.
Workshops:
- Urban Strategy workshop at NUS, conducted by TNO, Netherlands, 11-13th September 2023, as part of NUS-TNO research collaboration.
- Presentation at MAS+ Workshop Abroad: Singapore, 28th August – 1st September 2023, for ETH Risk Center delegation visiting Singapore ETH Centre. Title: Urban Digital Twins for Building Resilience.
- Presentation at Workshop on Urban Resilience, 1st –2nd August 2023, supported by the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) program, “Accelerating Research through International Network-to-Network Collaborations (AccelNet)”, under the Office of International Science & Engineering. Title: Overview on resilience in the built environment and work on digital twins for energy, carbon and climate resilience.
- Presentation of research work at the Future Resilient Systems (FRS) Module 2.3 Workshop: Urban Climate Modelling and Sensing to Assure Climate Resilience – held in SDE 4, NUS, 28th November, 2022.