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Design, implementation and evaluation of a daylight estimation tool using 3D city model data

Nezval, Peter LU (2021) In Student thesis series INES NGEM01 20212
Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
Abstract
Solar energy is an important component of sustainable urban development. However, it is still not reaching its full potential due to several reasons. One of them is a lack of free tools based on open geodata capable of estimating solar energy (daylight) metrics on building features, e.g.,windows, in the early stages of the urban planning process. To fill this gap, a design and implementation of the “Daylight Estimation Tool” is proposed in this thesis project. All inputs required by the tool can be created in free and open-source software. The tool uses two primary data sources – UMEP (Lindberg et al., 2015) energy simulation output files and a 3D city model. The tool performs several operations resulting in the estimation of solar... (More)
Solar energy is an important component of sustainable urban development. However, it is still not reaching its full potential due to several reasons. One of them is a lack of free tools based on open geodata capable of estimating solar energy (daylight) metrics on building features, e.g.,windows, in the early stages of the urban planning process. To fill this gap, a design and implementation of the “Daylight Estimation Tool” is proposed in this thesis project. All inputs required by the tool can be created in free and open-source software. The tool uses two primary data sources – UMEP (Lindberg et al., 2015) energy simulation output files and a 3D city model. The tool performs several operations resulting in the estimation of solar irradiance values for window features, the geometry of which is retrieved from the 3D city model. The output of the tool is an extended city model as well as a report with information about irradiance values on building surfaces. The extension of a 3D city model is done by adding the attributes to the semantic objects and by adding material objects for visualization purposes. The tool is evaluated against the test dataset created by the UMEP simulation tool and online VGI3D platform (Fan et al., 2021). The tool itself is a free and open-source project licensed under an MIT license and available on GitHub. (Less)
Popular Abstract
Urban areas are accountable for 70% worldwide CO2 emissions, even though cover only 3% of the entire global area. Furthermore, there is a continuous migration of world inhabitants to the cities. The fact of quick urbanization also creates a big pressure on the entire building sector(constructions and maintenance)to make a transition into higher energy efficiency as well as to use increase usage of energy coming from renewable and green sources. Solar energy is one of the key components how to achieve both goals mentioned above, e.g., using active solar systems to produce electricity on-site and using passive solar systems to increase higher energy efficiency of a building.

However, there are several limitations that block utilization of... (More)
Urban areas are accountable for 70% worldwide CO2 emissions, even though cover only 3% of the entire global area. Furthermore, there is a continuous migration of world inhabitants to the cities. The fact of quick urbanization also creates a big pressure on the entire building sector(constructions and maintenance)to make a transition into higher energy efficiency as well as to use increase usage of energy coming from renewable and green sources. Solar energy is one of the key components how to achieve both goals mentioned above, e.g., using active solar systems to produce electricity on-site and using passive solar systems to increase higher energy efficiency of a building.

However, there are several limitations that block utilization of solar energy at higher extent. One of them is a lack of tools, which urban planners could use in order to evaluate feasibility of construction site in terms of solar potential. Evaluation of solar potential on buildings and building features is important part of urban development especially in Nordic countries where the amount of daylight is limited especially during the winter. This thesis focused on a development of a tool that is able to calculate amount of solar irradiance hitting on façade windows. The design of the tool was made in respect to free geodata and existing free energy simulation software. Thus, the tool used two main data input –a 3D city containing window geometry(created by free online platform VGI3D)and a result of energy simulation software UMEP (available as a QGIS plug-in). The tool was developed by using the Python programming language and object-oriented programming paradigm. The design of the tool reflects the structure of 3D city model –developed object classes are more or less identical with the city objects stored in 3D city model. The tool uses several geoprocessing and raster overlay techniques to identify and extract correct values of solar irradiance on window features.These values are then written back to 3D city model stored in CityJSON format, which is one of the OGC standards.The second output of the tool is a report containing values of solar potential of all features, which are exposed to sun.The final step of the development of the tool was its evaluation using test dataset –27 buildings in the city center of Lund, Sweden. The output of the tool has been validated at both semantic and geometrical domain. The tool itself is a free and open-source project, which is available on GitHub and anyone can contribute to the further development. The further development of the tool should include better visualization capabilities, user friendly GUI. However, even without these features, the tool can help users to evaluate solar potential on building envelopes as well as building features. Availability of these kind of tools can help to increase utilization of solar energy in different application areas within the urban development. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Nezval, Peter LU
supervisor
organization
course
NGEM01 20212
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
3D city model, CityJSON, solar energy, free and open-source software, 3D feature extraction, solar urban planning, sustainable urban development, geomatics
publication/series
Student thesis series INES
report number
558
language
English
id
9068031
date added to LUP
2021-11-12 14:10:41
date last changed
2021-11-12 14:10:41
@misc{9068031,
  abstract     = {{Solar energy is an important component of sustainable urban development. However, it is still not reaching its full potential due to several reasons. One of them is a lack of free tools based on open geodata capable of estimating solar energy (daylight) metrics on building features, e.g.,windows, in the early stages of the urban planning process. To fill this gap, a design and implementation of the “Daylight Estimation Tool” is proposed in this thesis project. All inputs required by the tool can be created in free and open-source software. The tool uses two primary data sources – UMEP (Lindberg et al., 2015) energy simulation output files and a 3D city model. The tool performs several operations resulting in the estimation of solar irradiance values for window features, the geometry of which is retrieved from the 3D city model. The output of the tool is an extended city model as well as a report with information about irradiance values on building surfaces. The extension of a 3D city model is done by adding the attributes to the semantic objects and by adding material objects for visualization purposes. The tool is evaluated against the test dataset created by the UMEP simulation tool and online VGI3D platform (Fan et al., 2021). The tool itself is a free and open-source project licensed under an MIT license and available on GitHub.}},
  author       = {{Nezval, Peter}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  series       = {{Student thesis series INES}},
  title        = {{Design, implementation and evaluation of a daylight estimation tool using 3D city model data}},
  year         = {{2021}},
}