Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Urban policies and sustainable energy management


ABSTRACT: This paper describes the results of the first year of the SoURCE Sustainable Urban Cells research project. The projects main objective, focused on sustainable management of urban areas from an interdisciplinary and holistic approach, is to experience the sustainable reshaping of the city considering a minimum core of the larger citys model, conventionally called the urban cell. The methodological approach aims to evaluate and improve the energy flows from nature to city, from city to itself and from city to nature. The method seeks to provide a standard procedure to evaluate the performance and optimization of the urban cell energy balance through innovation technology either with the use of renewable resources or in the final consumptions. The methodology was tested in a case study of a single urban cell. Since any urban cell will have a different energy balance due to local characteristics and functions, an urban cell can be added to a close one (generating a urban cells grid) in order to ensure a better energy balance from the addition of more than one urban cell. The project foresees the elaboration of tools and strategies for citizen information, training them about energy sustainability, with special emphasis on young people.

COMMENT: This research belongs to a project named Source which is aim to get better sustainable management in Italy and Sweden. The writers introduce a method based on a minimum core called “urban cell” of the city to calculate and assess the balance between potential use of renewable energy source and energy consumptions. The writers also take it into a case study and get some results and conclusions. In my opinion, the method can be optimized for the simulation of energy use, because it provides a possibility to calculate the Ep and Ec. The models of urban area are currently idealized, so this method can be well fit for energy simulation of urban areas. As a primary idea, I will try to take it into practical use and get data which may be valuable for my research. It’s may be an easy way to get something that I want to analysis.

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