Todeschi, V;
Javanroodi, K;
Castello, R;
Mohajeri, N;
Mutani, G;
Scartezzini, JL;
(2022)
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the energy performance of residential neighborhoods and their occupancy behavior.
Sustainable Cities and Society
, 82
, Article 103896. 10.1016/j.scs.2022.103896.
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Abstract
Several contrasting effects are reported in the existing literature concerning the impact assessment of the COVID-19 outbreak on the use of energy in buildings. Following an in-depth literature review, we here propose a GIS-based approach, based on pre-pandemic, partial, and full lockdown scenarios, using a bottom-up engineering model to quantify these impacts. The model has been verified against measured energy data from a total number of 451 buildings in three urban neighborhoods in the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. The accuracy of the engineering model in predicting the energy demand has been improved by 10%, in terms of the mean absolute percentage error, as a result of adopting a data-driven correction with a random forest algorithm. The obtained results show that the energy demand for space heating and cooling tended to increase by 8% and 17%, respectively, during the partial lockdown, while these numbers rose to 13% and 28% in the case of the full lockdown. The study also reveals that the introduced detailed occupancy scenarios are the key to improving the accuracy of urban building energy models (UBEMs). Finally, it is shown that the proposed GIS-based approach can be used to mitigate the expected impacts of any possible future pandemic in urban neighborhoods.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the energy performance of residential neighborhoods and their occupancy behavior |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.scs.2022.103896 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2022.103896 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third-party material in this article are included in the Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | COVID-19 pandemic, GIS, Space heating and cooling, Random forest, Occupancy profile, Urban morphology |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > Bartlett School Env, Energy and Resources |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10164892 |
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