A spatial perspective of the domestic energy consumption intensity patterns in sub-city areas. A case study from the United Kingdom

Abstract

This paper explore the benefits of an bottom-up spatially enabled building-based energy framework in identifying districts, neighbourhoods, and community's building aggregated areas with spatial expressions patters most similar to a given parameter within the energy profile. In districts, we argue that the hot spot cluster technique simplify the complexity of the urban extent of the energy consumption intensity which potentially signpost ad-hoc energy retrofit planning scenarios and flexible local distributed generation strategies. In neighbourhoods and communities, our results suggest that the number of heated rooms rather than the simple count of the number of rooms, as a proxy for the usable floor area, leads to a better density metric indicator, the space per person, which is more appealing to energy studies despite not being available in UK statistics as it should be. Additionally, certain geometry on the local construction of the UK's city settlements lead to original building types, like the Tyneside Flats, that are both difficult to harmonize with existing national data sets, and to model; and, more importantly, to effectively assess the estimated energy savings that will result from potential measures. This represent a challenge not only to the government energy-efficiency national financing mechanism like the Green Deal but also for manufactures and suppliers, which have to provide specifications for a large number of architectural details. This modelling exercise is undertaken within the city limits and are set in the context of an unique identification of Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) in a Geographical Information System (GIS).