Ahmed Khoja
Munich University of Applied Sciences
As of 2014, Ahmed is working as a researcher and lecturer at the Institute for Construction and Building Climatology at the Faculty of Architecture of Munich University of Applied Sciences. His research areas include Sustainable urban neighborhoods, energy efficient retrofitting and zero energy developments. Ahmed holds Bachelor Degree in Architecture from King Abdul-Aziz University and Master’s Degree in Energy Efficient and Sustainable Construction from the Technical University of Munich, where he is also perusing his Ph.D. degree under the supervision of Prof. Thomas Auer.
Given that majority of buildings were built when energy efficiency requirements were limited or non-existent, renovating the building stock can be seen as one of key aspects in reaching the EU 2020 and 2030 goals. The effectiveness of building retrofitting can be increased significantly through considering each building as a part of a global energy system in a district. This approach enables considering all buildings located in the same district as an entity. In this case the application of retrofitting measures is not limited to individual buildings only but can be applied on the whole district level through exploiting synergies and interactions between buildings and their surrounding infrastructure and environment.
While planning retrofitting concepts for individual buildings is a challenging task, the complexity and work intensity for planners on the district scale increases significantly. Moreover, in order to find the optimum retrofitting solution for the whole district, planners have to consider several criteria like the total impacts on the environment, the life cycle costs, the return of investment as well as social impacts of the planned measures. Having the holistic picture of the district situation presents a major challenge to planners of district retrofitting projects and can only be solved following a well-structured and thoughtful methodology which guides all involved stakeholders throughout the different phases of the project. To facilitate the planning on the district scale and to improve the effectiveness of the planning and implementation process of energy retrofitting measures, the use of an advanced and integrated planning and decision-support tool (IDST) is indispensable.
Within the EU funded research project FASUDIR (Friendly and Affordable Sustainable Urban Districts Retrofitting) which ran from 2013 to 2016 the FASUDIR IDST software tool was developed. The IDST enables modelling the district and its buildings through a friendly user interface to facilitate the interaction between the multiple stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. The IDST allows end users to identify the most promising sustainable retrofitting strategies and technical solutions at the building and district level, by creating ranked list of optimised variants based on dynamic simulation results. Moreover, the IDST allows decision makers and planners to assess the district current energy performance, its energy generation potential, the feasibility of introducing new renewable energy systems and possible impact of applying different demand side management strategies on the district electrical load and storage capacities, thus laying the necessary foundation for developing a smart micro-grid system for the district.
The IDST was validated in three diverse urban areas to highlight the Europe-wide potential applicability. The areas were chosen to be representative of typical districts and climates: a cultural heritage district in Santiago de Compostela, Spain; a communist era district in Budapest, Hungary; and a 70’s residential districts in Frankfurt, Germany
Currently based on the FASUDIR project results three key partners from the FASUDIR project including the authors decided to follow the development of IDST tool to a IDST BIM (Building Information Modeling) and DIM (District Information modelling) tool under the name FeliCity. The FeliCity platform built upon the lessons learned from the FASUDIR project and is currently under development for a market-ready tool by the end of 2018. Currently FeliCity is being tested in its beta phase in 7 major European cities, representing 5 EU countries within the EU Interreg project CESBA MED.
