applied Modeling and urbAn Planning laws: Urban Climate and Energy – MApUCE

We propose to develop an automated method for computing buildings energy/micro-climate data, by using national databases providing us parameters and relevant urban indicators (geometric, architectural, socio-economical,...) at the district scale (sub-division of towns) anywhere in France. The urban climate will be modelled with TEB (Town Energy Balance), a model designed by CRNM laboratory (Méteo France), which is able to model the city-atmosphere energy exchanges at the scale of districts and including a building energy model. We will develop a model of energy behaviour of inhabitants and office buildings users, in order to refine the calculations of energy consumption in TEB. The coupled climate-energy-behaviour model will be applied to a panel of French cities to simulate and analyse energy exchanges across France for the current and future climates (2050).
The second step of the project will identify potential ways of enhancing the energy balance at the city level, by acting on various scales of urban planning: from household’s behaviour, architecture of buildings to urban infrastructures. We will analyze the French legal framework of urban planning to determine how documents or existing devices take into account - or not - the energy-climate issue. Also, basing on the needs of urban planning agencies, we will define visual tools and methodologies to transform quantitative data of energy, micro-climate and climate change into knowledge for the legal documents, by producing climate maps for instance. One of the main project challenges is to demonstrate the operational applicability of the project results in documents and practices of current planning processes. Some cities taken as exemplary cases will be used as concrete places to experiment the transfer of climatic knowledge toward urban planning practices. Three experiments are planned in Toulouse, Aix en Provence and La Rochelle that are currently working on their Territorial Energy and Climate Plan (PCET)

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In terms of results, the cross-analysis between urban settings and simulated micro-climate-energy data will be released online in the form of standardized maps for each city of the study panel. The production of urban indicators and models will be released as open-source softwares and data.

Following the trend set by the Grenelle II law, the urban planning exercise is an appropriate setting for the integration of energy and climate issues in public policies. However, if it provides a framework for project planning, it does not support its implementation, and is an exercise limited to a given territory.

To facilitate this implementation, the MApUCE project aims to integrate in urban policies and most relevant legal documents quantitative data from urban microclimate, climate and energy, in a process applicable to all cities of France.

The primary objective of this project is to obtain climate and energy quantitative data from numerical simulations, focusing on building energy consumption in the residential and service sectors, which represents 41% of the final energy consumption. We propose to develop, using national databases, a generic and automated method for generating in France and at the scale of urban blocks, the urban architectural, geographical and sociological parameters necessary for energy simulations.
In terms of models, the project will use the urban climate model TEB, which includes a building energy module. We will develop a model of energy consumer behaviour in order to further refine energy consumption calculations within TEB. The resulting climate-energy-behaviour coupled model will be applied to a broad range of French cities, to establish a climate-related energy diagnosis across France for current or future (2050) climates.

The second objective of the project is to propose a methodology to integrate quantitative data in legal proceedings and urban policies. We plan to work on all planning documents to identify the potential levers for change and the relevant scales regardless of the territories and engineering in place. We will analyse the legal documents to determine how the existing legal systems integrate or not the energy-climate issues. We will then study the implementation policies and few “best cases” in order to evaluate their performances. Finally, based on urban planning agencies requirements, we will define vectors to pass on quantified energy-climate data to legal urban planning documents. These vectors have to be understandable by urban planners and contain the relevant information. These could be urban climate maps. The relevance of the project is to integrate these vectors in the documents and practices that have the greatest potential. Three experiments are planned in Toulouse, Aix en Provence and La Rochelle to confront the developed tools to actual planning approaches.

To meet these challenges, the project is organized around strongly interdisciplinary partners in the following fields: law, urban climate, building energetics, architecture, sociology, geography and meteorology, as well as the national federation of urban planning agencies.

In terms of results, the cross-analysis of input urban parameters and urban micro-climate-energy simulated data will be available on-line as standardized maps for each of the studied cities. The urban parameter production tool as well as the models will be available as open-source.

Finally, in response to the main goal of the project, a guide providing a method of implementation in different legal and incentive documents will be produced. It will identify the levers that improve the implementation of energy savings and climate management policies by integrating them into planning mechanisms "at the right time, at the right place, with the right tool".