João Pedro Gouveia

Smart City Energy Planning: Integrating Data and Tools

This paper presents an innovative analytical framework to address incomplete interpretations and dispersed data of the energy system in cities, which usually generate multiple inefficiencies. Integrative city planning takes the city energy system from the supply to the demand while considering its spatial representativeness, and drives optimal cost-efficient assessment towards future sustainable energy targets. This holistic approach delivers more adequate policies and measures towards higher energy use efficiency. The proposed analytical framework has been developed within the INSMART EU funded project and focuses on data gathering procedures and data processing tools and models, covering a wide range of citys energy consumers, as residential buildings, transport and utilities. The results, mapped into a GIS, can be further exploited either for awareness increase of citizens and for decision support of city energy planners.

Energy Policies Influenced by Energy Systems Modelling—Case Studies in UK, Ireland, Portugal and G8

A key objective of IEA-ETSAP is to assist decision makers in robustly developing, implementing and assessing the impact of energy and climate mitigation policies. This chapter focuses on four case studies, in which there is clear evidence of a direct link between the use of MARKAL and TIMES scenario modelling activities and the resulting policy decisions. The case studies selected assess how the (i) UK MARKAL model informed the development of energy and climate mitigation policy in the UK, focusing on the Energy White Paper in 2003, the Energy White Paper in 2007 and the Climate Change Act in 2008; (ii) Irish TIMES model informed the development of climate mitigation legislation in Ireland in 2014 and Ireland’s negotiating position regarding the EU 2030 Climate Energy Package in 2014; (iii) TIMES_PT model informed climate policy in Portugal in the last 10 years and has supported the design of climate mitigation policies; (iv) IEA ETP Model informed the G8 in responding to the 2005 Gleneagles Plan of Action and has supported the work of the Major Economies Forum and Clean Energy Ministerial. This chapter collates methodologies and results from these different case studies and summarizes some key findings regarding (i) policy frameworks and goals; (ii) how policy makers have been intertwined with the modelling tool during the modelling process; (iii) the role of the economic stakeholders dialogue; (iv) main insights from the modelling exercises; (v) lessons learnt: from effective contributions to real limitations and (vi) recommendations.

Indirect Keyword Recommendation

Helping users to find useful contacts or potentially interesting subjects is a challenge for social and productive networks. The evidence of the content produced by users must be considered in this task, which may be simplified by the use of the meta-data associated with the content, i.e., The categorization supported by the network -- descriptive keywords, or tags. In this paper we present a model that enables keyword discovery methods through the interpretation of the network as a graph, solely relying on keywords that categorize or describe productive items. The model and keyword discovery methods presented in this paper avoid content analysis, and move towards a generic approach to the identification of relevant interests and, eventually, contacts. The evaluation of the model and methods is executed by two experiments that perform frequency and classification analyses over the Flickr network. The results show that we can efficiently recommend keywords to users.

Challenges Faced When Addressing the Role of Cities Towards a Below Two Degrees World

In order to achieve the goal of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change to limit average global temperature rise to well under 2 °C, concerted action will be needed in cities to manage energy consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But, what can be done at city level to move towards such a global ambitious target? The project InSMART (Integrative Smart City Planning) brought together four EU cities: Evora (Portugal), Cesena (Italy), Nottingham (UK) and Trikala (Greece), and scientific organizations in these countries in order to try and provide some answers to this question. A methodology was established for enhancing sustainable energy planning for future city needs through an integrative and multidisciplinary approach, including City Energy System Models (ESM), development of different scenarios with a participatory workshop approach, and a multi-criteria assessment for the final ranking of measures and the development of a Sustainable Energy Action Plan. It is important not to overestimate the contribution and the area of influence of city-agents to the global GHG target; but it is undoubted that municipalities are extremely well positioned for actions related to households, and their consumption in buildings and transport, for bridging locally the gap between what is perceived/known and what would be economically and technically feasible and for urban planning with a focus on significant benefits for GHG emissions reduction.

The PrioritEE Approach to Reinforce the Capacities of Local Administrations in the Energy Management of Public Buildings

In the Mediterranean area most of the public authorities need to enhance their institutional capacity in the field of Energy Efficiency (EE) and use of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in order to contribute to the Energy Performance of Buildings and the Energy Efficiency Directives, developing solutions suited to various regional contexts. The PrioritEE project, funded by the Interreg MED programme, aims at reinforcing the capacities of public administrations in selecting and implementing eco-friendly and cost-effective energy planning measures. This paper aims to describe the main efforts carried out by local public authorities and professional institutions from five MED countries (Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Croatia) in order to reduce energy consumption and prioritize EE investments in Municipal Public Buildings (MPBs). In particular, it focuses on the methodological framework describing the main components of the proposed toolbox, the main objectives and expected outcomes but also the current achievements and the way forward.

Temporal and Spatial Evolution through Images

Image matching algorithms are used in image search, classification and retrieval but are also useful to show how urban structures evolve over time. Images have the power to illustrate and evoke past events and can be used to show the evolution of structures such as buildings and other elements present in the urban landscape. The paper describes a process and a tool to provide a chronological journey through time, given a set of photographs from different time periods. The developed tool provides the ability to generate visualizations of a geographic location, given a set of related images, taken at different periods in time. It automatically processes comparisons of images and establishes relationships between them. It also offers a semi-automated method to define relationships between parts of images.