Modeling building energy use at an urban scale

The Energy and Environmental Prediction (EEP) model is an environmental auditing and decision making tool for cities, to be used by planners and others in pursuit of sustainable development. The EEP model is based on Geographical Information System (GIS) techniques and incorporates a number of sub-models to establish current energy use and emissions produced by buildings, transport systems and industry. Two of the sub-models are concerned with building energy use, namely, for domestic and non-domestic buildings. In order to predict building energy use over the whole of the city or local authority area, data is needed on the building stock. This paper describes the level of data required, the survey technique and the operation of the EEP model to predict building energy use.