Existing Buildings | Workflow Overview
This page describes eight steps to develop a carbon reduction pathway analysis for an existing neighborhood or city. To build the underlying Urban Building Energy Model (UBEM), you will need a sustainability champion, a GIS manager and an energy modeler. The eight steps and three roles are described below. Further background and a case study are provided here. One individual may cover more than one role. The notion of breaking the process up into these roles is that it is easier/more affordable for cities to separately hire/work with a GIS expert and green building consultant than having to find an individual with domain knowledge in both fields.
Three Roles
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Sustainability Champion
As with any policy-related task, the process requires a champion whose mandate is to promote/implement a municipality’s carbon emissions reduction goals. In many cases, this individual will be a generalist with responsibilities expanding beyond buildings to transportation and other sustainability-related municipal concerns.
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GIS Manager
The GIS manager has access to and is familiar with a jurisdiction's urban datasets such as shapefiles, tax accessor data, LiDAR etc. The role is key to the project since shapefiles often have to undergo some cleanup before the data can be successfully converted into an UBEM. Having the GIS manager onboard ensures that this data cleanup is applied consistently.
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Energy Modeler
The energy modeler has a background in green building consulting and individual building energy modeling (BEM) . The energy modeler will work with the Sustainability Champion to define shallow and deep energy retrofitting upgrades for the local building stock and work with the GIS manager to build an UBEM to calculate the resulting stock-level carbon dioxide reductions.
Eight Workflow Steps
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Step 1 Feasibility Check
The sustainability champion verifies with the GIS manager that all data requirements are met and hires an energy modeler.
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Step 2 Define Project Scope
The whole team meets to define the study area and agree on shallow and deep building retrofit upgrades, targets, timeline etc.
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Step 3 GIS Data Preparation
The GIS manager prepares the UBEM geometry, creates a .uio file on UBEM.io, and forwards the data to the energy modeler.
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Step 4 Build Baseline UBEM
The energy modeler builds a baseline UBEM to reflect the “as is” conditions.
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Step 5 Run Baseline UBEM
The energy modeler runs the baseline UBEM in UMI and verifies that the results align with the emissions inventory.
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Step 6 Create Building Upgrades
The energy modeler creates building upgrade scenarios based on the packages defined under step 2 and builds the appropriate templates on UBEM.io.
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Step 7 Analyze Scenarios
The energy modeler uploads and analyzes the results on UBEM.io. If targets are not met, the energy modeler may decide to run additional scenarios (repeat steps 5 to 7).
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Step 8 Present Findings
The energy modeler shares results with the sustainability champion and other stakeholders as needed.