The deliverable 4.1, Limerick DST (Integrated Modelling and Decision Support Tool) including training manuals/videos, was submitted by IES R&D in August 2020. The executive summary of the deliverable is available below and the full deliverable at the end for download:
“This deliverable outlines the Demonstrations that have been given to Limerick City and County Council (LCCC) over the past 12 months along with training on how to use the Integrated Modelling and Decision Support Tool (DST) so that LCCC staff could operate the DST for their own purposes and use it to inform the development of the Bold City Vision (T4.2) and future development of the Limerick PEB and Positive Energy District. It was also important for LCCC to be trained in the use of the tool so that they could provide feedback to IESRD with respect to functionality and inform further developments as part of WP1 activities. As such an initial large demonstration and training was organised for May 2019 and this was followed up with smaller updates during the WP4 monthly meetings in Limerick and followed by a further demonstration and workshop in February 2020 where the addition of the socio-economic factors was discussed as well as the dashboards for public display.
It should be noted that the DST itself is an engineering platform. It allows the end user to create a model of a city, district, block etc. and carry out different analysis for hard measures such as renovation, or energy efficiency upgrades and understand the impacts on both energy and carbon reduction targets as well as the impact on other socio-economic factors such as health, job growth, improved GDP, etc. It also allows analysis of EV charging stations and local production interacting with the distribution networks and analysis of district heating networks and how the district heating network and electricity networks can work in co-operation with each other to meet the overall PEB requirements.
All data can be uploaded to a public cloud-based model, which can then be used to engage with the public and other relevant stakeholders. This creates a multi-vectoral approach which is a core asset of the tool. However, as the platform takes into account different vectors, these vectors also have different stakeholders, e.g. engineers with the knowledge of the buildings, the building physics and the associated systems; urban planners who understand the socio-economic impacts of different interventions; and power system engineers who understand the operation of the grid infrastructure etc.
The initial intention for the DST was that it would be used by all stakeholders, i.e. engineers, urban planners, power systems engineers etc. However, during the training it was identified that the DST could not be immediately used by each of these stakeholders without the stakeholders having a base knowledge of the other industries. For example, the engineer and power systems engineer would need to know about socio-economic factors of urban planning; the urban planner would need knowledge of building energy efficiency and local production systems etc., which is not always feasible. As such, since the first demo was given, improvements have been made to the DST to enable a technical user to incorporate aspects such as socio-economics and power systems without requiring in-depth training in these areas. However, it was seen unpractical to expect the urban planner to have to train in e.g. building physics and power systems engineering and hence an add-on to the DST was proposed for the urban planner. This add-on will be in the form of a dashboard, where the results from the analysis can be displayed in a format that is suitable for the urban planner to take a decision but also to enable them to present an argument for an approach to their local councillors and planning authorities. This is new work, not envisaged during the proposal phase but is deemed important to complete in order to have a valuable DST that is replicable and can be exploited at the end of the project. These improvements will be described in this deliverable and further reported in Deliverable 1.4 (Demonstration of the +CityxChange Integrated Modelling Platform).
In this deliverable, the following is described:
● the demos that were given to LCCC over the past 12 months;
● the current status of training guides and manuals that were provided (continuously updated in line with Task 1.4 as the tool is finalised);
● how the DST can be used to inform the Bold City Vision (BCV) through the presentation of a number of scenarios that demonstrate the value of the tool;
● the proposed dashboard for the urban planner to enable them to take decisions and present information to their local councillors and planning authorities;
● the public dashboard and how it can be used to raise awareness with a variety of stakeholders including a link to the video for what the public dashboard looks like.”
