Start Designing Your Perfect PED With BIPED's Digital Twin
- pavel7733
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An integrated platform combining Aarhus' digital twin, data catalogue and dashboards to fast-track climate neutrality
BIPED digital twin showing heating sources and solar potential of Aarhus buildings
Press Release: The challenging nature of energy transition is forcing cities to test new concepts and technologies to reach climate neutrality sooner than later. Positive Energy Districts and Local Digital Twins are two innovative solutions that Aarhus is using in combination to drive forward smart and sustainable urban development.
PEDs are energy efficient urban areas that produce more clean energy than they consume annually. Once a district's own energy needs are covered, PEDs can share the surplus with neighbouring areas. This way, district by district, cities can scale the +energy concept to reach city-wide decarbonization.
But planning and implementing PEDs is no easy task. Districts are multi-functional spaces with diverse urban typologies and land uses that have different energy demands. All these individual characteristics and interdependencies need to be factored in when designing PEDs. This is where BIPED's LDT comes in.
BIPED platform components
The current release provides an integrated environment for data-informed PED planning. It includes:
A virtual 3D copy of Aarhus showing its physical environment
A data catalogue covering energy, mobility, environment, and demography
Dashboards visualising traffic and building occupancy in 2D
A model coordinator tool integrating remotely hosted data models e.g. traffic model
Supported use cases
With existing tools, users can already do the following:
Assess solar potential of different buildings to plan investment in rooftop PVs
Examine traffic flows to identify optimal decarbonization interventions in transport (which accounts for almost half of Aarhus CO2e emissions)
Study spatio-temporal patterns in building occupancy to understand their potential impact on energy loads
Monitor active occupants’ engagements to regulate indoor climate in selected buildings
What's next
Future LDT releases will incorporate modules on district heating, indoor climate, and green spaces to offer more advanced insights to PED stakeholders.
"We are excited about this release of the BIPED platform," said BIPED's coordinator Razgar Ibrahimy of DTU. "It integrates multiple tools from different project partners to provide a practical solution for PED development in Aarhus, embracing citizen engagement and hopefully inspiring other cities to follow suit.