Skip to main content
European Commission logo print header

Optimised Energy Efficient Design Platform for Refurbishment at District Level

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - OptEEmAL (Optimised Energy Efficient Design Platform for Refurbishment at District Level)

Période du rapport: 2018-03-01 au 2019-02-28

OptEEmAL has developed an Optimised Energy Efficient Design Platform able to design energy efficient retrofitting projects that are based on different energy conservation measures to improve the behaviour of a district. The tool reduces time delivery and uncertainties and result in improved solutions when compared to business-as-usual practices. Under the coordination of Fundación CARTIF, 13 partners from 8 countries are working on delivering this objective. The main output of the project is a functioning platform at a TRL 7 (demonstration of the platform in operational environment). OptEEmAL is based on the integration of 5 main pillars:

• Integration of a BIM-based information exchange approach to enhance collaboration between stakeholders and improve information flows within the design process.
• Integration of an IPD-based retrofitting design approach, to facilitate communication, knowledge sharing and consensus among interested stakeholders.
• Integration of a catalogue of Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs) considering scale of implementation and providing all needed data for the evaluation of the design alternatives.
• Integration of a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) approach for decision making integrating the interest of the stakeholders and making use of well-established indicators at different scales.
• Integration of a semantic data model and data mapping processes to ensure interoperability among the platform components and consistency of communications.

The platform has been validated and demonstrated within 3 case studies and 3 demonstration sites aiming at ensuring the accuracy and consistency of the outcomes provided.
During the last period of the project (m30-m42) the following activities have been addressed:
• Holistic and effective services platform for District Energy Efficient Retrofitting Design (WP5). Based on the prototype of the platform developed and validated at TRL5 at the end of the previous period, the period under evaluation has been focused on advancing and improving the platform to be tested within a wide range of case studies and demo cases in order to address TRL6 and TRL7.
• Stakeholders’ involvement through an Integrated Project Delivery approach (WP1). The period under evaluation has been dedicated to provide the end-users with appropriate guidance in order to make use of the platform while improving the collaboration among stakeholders.
• Input and output data (WP1). The activities towards this activity were almost finalised during the previous period while the period under evaluation (m31-m42) has been dedicated to improve the components to deal with cases with increased complexity and scale.
• Integrated ontology-based District Data Model (WP2). During the period activities to improve the data transformation processes and also to integrate new elements of data (as the insertion of baseline energy systems) have been carried out.
• Development of a catalogue (WP3). The main activities within this axis have been focused on improving the version of the ECMs catalogue both in terms of measures included to provide a wider range of solutions and position OptEEmAL closer to the real construction market, and to improve the accuracy of data in order to ensure that the information contained is valid and coherent.
• Optimisation and simulation modules (WP4). During the period the main efforts have been dedicated to improving the integration of data to provide more complex simulation models that allow covering cases with increased complexity and scale.
• Validation and demonstration activities (WP6). This has been the core activity during the period under evaluation, feeding the other activities and work packages through establishing the required updates and improvements resulting from the validation activities. Three case studies and another three demo cases have allowed demonstrating the platform at TRL6 and partially at TRL7 while ensuring the accuracy of data and the validity of the results provided through the platform. Important efforts have been dedicated to the end-user involvement and training, supporting the development of guidelines, supporting materials, training events and an analysis on IPD implementation in the demo cases.
• Dissemination and exploitation (WP7). Activities towards supporting the achievement of the project impacts through D&C and exploitation activities have been continuously implemented in the period under evaluation based on the strategy delivered at the beginning of the project. Some of these include the production of final materials, organisation of events and conferences, support to the training activities or production of videos on the project and the use of the platform.
The present approach will bring several areas of innovations beyond the current SOTA:

• OptEEmAL integrates relevant issues and stakeholders so that relevant information for the design of district retrofitting plans are taken into account in a single framework, providing a support for the implementation of a holistic and integrated approach, which is not possible in currently available tools. The project will provide extensive guidelines on participation.
• OptEEmAL allows the definition and evaluation of refurbishment scenarios of districts taking into account environmental, economic and social indicators.
• OptEEmAL takes advantage of geo-clustering techniques providing automatic answer to climate and energy price queries with the creation of a specific geospatial information database.
• OptEEmAL takes advantage of the experience of its consortium partner’s to provide a wide catalogue on energy efficient measures at both building and district level.
• OptEEmAL platform integrates a multi-objective optimisation module based on Evolutionary algorithms, to define and evaluate automatically, refurbishment scenarios at district level.
• OptEEmAL combines and integrates multidisciplinary and diverse data sources. The Semantic Web technology to be implemented enables the transformation of the captured data into meaningful information.
• The outputs of the whole OptEEmAL tool will then be part of the decision making/best-alternative-selection optimisation process to identify the best retrofitting configuration while respecting stakeholder requirements.

The project impacts are classified in several categories depending on what it is concerned:

• Economic impact, through the reduction of costs during the design phase by about 19% compared to business-as-usual. The operation phase cost could be reduced at a 25% by promoting holistic solutions, leading to a RoI reduction over a 50%.
• Market competitiveness increase through the enhancement of the utilisation of energy efficient solutions in a holistic integration and improvement of the contractual processes.
• Growth of the European construction sector through the creation or improvement of 24,885 jobs in the sector in 10 years and fostering the updating of 3 million of SMEs.
• Social impacts by the involvement of inhabitants in the decision making process to achieve compliancy with their expectations and increasing user acceptance and improvement of social wellbeing.
• Fostering the dissemination of the new knowledge at professional level through specific information channels and actions targeting the identified stakeholder groups.
Timeline of the project
Overall concept and approach
Map of partners
Overall Work Plan structure
Main pillars integrating OptEEmAL