Urban energy performance monitoring for Smart City decision support environments

In this essay we wish to present an interdisciplinary study carried out in the framework of two Interreg Italy-Austria projects which were intended to design methodologies, simulation tools and decision support instruments to face energy challenges within the overall Smart City concept. The proposed strategy uses a physical model (“City Model”) and an energy behavior model (“City Sensing”) of the urban environment. They were developed using two different approaches: the first is mainly based on analysis of surveys data and the second one on simulations and processing of large-scale datasets. “City Model” and “City Sensing” were then merged to provide an Urban Building Energy Model - that we called “City Energy Model” - integrated with a Participatory Public GIS platform.

Spatial moments of catchment rainfall: rainfall spatial organisation, basin morphology, and flood response

Abstract. This paper describes a set of spatial rainfall statistics (termed "spatial moments of catchment rainfall") quantifying the dependence existing between spatial rainfall organisation, basin morphology and runoff response. These statistics describe the spatial rainfall organisation in terms of concentration and dispersion statistics as a function of the distance measured along the flow routing coordinate. The introduction of these statistics permits derivation of a simple relationship for the quantification of catchment-scale storm velocity. The concept of the catchment-scale storm velocity takes into account the role of relative catchment orientation and morphology with respect to storm motion and kinematics. The paper illustrates the derivation of the statistics from an analytical framework recently proposed in literature and explains the conceptual meaning of the statistics by applying them to five extreme flash floods occurred in various European regions in the period 2002–2007. High resolution radar rainfall fields and a distributed hydrologic model are employed to examine how effective are these statistics in describing the degree of spatial rainfall organisation which is important for runoff modelling. This is obtained by quantifying the effects of neglecting the spatial rainfall variability on flood modelling, with a focus on runoff timing. The size of the study catchments ranges between 36 to 982 km2. The analysis reported here shows that the spatial moments of catchment rainfall can be effectively employed to isolate and describe the features of rainfall spatial organization which have significant impact on runoff simulation. These statistics provide useful information on what space-time scales rainfall has to be monitored, given certain catchment and flood characteristics, and what are the effects of space-time aggregation on flood response modeling

Grid based energy system setup optimisation with Rivus in dedicated regions

Within the project IDEE (Integrated Design Efficient Energy systems in urban regions) the expertise of four cross-border (Italia & Austria) research centres and one public authority is bundled up to support the planning of new setups or the extension of existing setups in grid based sustainable energy systems for pilot regions inside the project areas. A special focus within the project is the optimization of network topologies in district heating setups. First scenarios on possible system setups for the pilot regions have been calculated outlining the topology of optimal pipe setups as well as the load of (Heat-) pipes at different time steps with the objective to minimise overall system costs. Keywords: District heating, Optimization, Network calculation, MIL

Changing climate both increases and decreases European river floods

Climate change has led to concerns about increasing river floods resulting from the greater water-holding capacity of a warmer atmosphere. These concerns are reinforced by evidence of increasing economic losses associated with flooding in many parts of the world, including Europe. Any changes in river floods would have lasting implications for the design of flood protection measures and flood risk zoning. However, existing studies have been unable to identify a consistent continental-scale climatic-change signal in flood discharge observations in Europe, because of the limited spatial coverage and number of hydrometric stations. Here we demonstrate clear regional patterns of both increases and decreases in observed river flood discharges in the past five decades in Europe, which are manifestations of a changing climate. Our results—arising from the most complete database of European flooding so far—suggest that: increasing autumn and winter rainfall has resulted in increasing floods in northwestern Europe; decreasing precipitation and increasing evaporation have led to decreasing floods in medium and large catchments in southern Europe; and decreasing snow cover and snowmelt, resulting from warmer temperatures, have led to decreasing floods in eastern Europe. Regional flood discharge trends in Europe range from an increase of about 11 per cent per decade to a decrease of 23 per cent. Notwithstanding the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the observational record, the flood changes identified here are broadly consistent with climate model projections for the next century, suggesting that climate-driven changes are already happening and supporting calls for the consideration of climate change in flood risk management

Changing climate shifts timing of European floods

A warming climate is expected to have an impact on the magnitude and timing of river floods; however, no consistent large-scale climate change signal in observed flood magnitudes has been identified so far. We analyzed the timing of river floods in Europe over the past five decades, using a pan-European database from 4262 observational hydrometric stations, and found clear patterns of change in flood timing. Warmer temperatures have led to earlier spring snowmelt floods throughout northeastern Europe; delayed winter storms associated with polar warming have led to later winter floods around the North Sea and some sectors of the Mediterranean coast; and earlier soil moisture maxima have led to earlier winter floods in western Europe. Our results highlight the existence of a clear climate signal in flood observations at the continental scale

Megafloods in Europe can be anticipated from observations in hydrologically similar catchments

Megafloods that far exceed previously observed records often take citizens and experts by surprise, resulting in extremely severe damage and loss of life. Existing methods based on local and regional information rarely go beyond national borders and cannot predict these floods well because of limited data on megafloods, and because flood generation processes of extremes differ from those of smaller, more frequently observed events. Here we analyse river discharge observations from over 8,000 gauging stations across Europe and show that recent megafloods could have been anticipated from those previously observed in other places in Europe. Almost all observed megafloods (95.5%) fall within the envelope values estimated from previous floods in other similar places on the continent, implying that local surprises are not surprising at the continental scale. This holds also for older events, indicating that megafloods have not changed much in time relative to their spatial variability. The underlying concept of the study is that catchments with similar flood generation processes produce similar outliers. It is thus essential to transcend national boundaries and learn from other places across the continent to avoid surprises and save lives

Geomatic City Sensing, citt\ue0, reti, sensori e tempo reale

Come si pu\uf2 governare senza conoscere? La soluzione delle problematiche territoriali mediante decisioni e azioni specifiche non pu\uf2 prescindere dalla comprensione di oggetti, fenomeni, correlazioni e dinamiche che ci forniscono gli elementi necessari a definire una strategia e, com\u2019\ue8 noto, pi\uf9 il contesto \ue8 articolato e pi\uf9 \ue8 difficile conoscere e capire. Il territorio, entit\ue0 oggettivamente complessa e bene collettivo prezioso, ha visto negli ultimi anni una progressiva diminuzione dell\u2019efficacia degli strumenti messi in atto dagli attori istituzionali per assicurare la sostenibilit\ue0 delle attivit\ue0 umane e contrastare il degrado dell\u2019ambiente a fronte di una crescente vivacit\ue0 del mercato e delle comunit\ue0 locali sugli stessi temi, sia sul versante profit sia su quello non-profit. Data questa tendenza, oggi \ue8 probabilmente necessario pensare ad un nuovo ruolo degli attori non istituzionali all\u2019interno dei processi decisionali per arrivare ad una reale ed effettiva \u201cGovernance del territorio\u201d e, in questo contesto, il ruolo dell\u2019informazione territoriale e ambientale e della comunicazione/condivisione della conoscenza tra attori diversi appare quanto mai centrale. L\u2019esponenziale crescita degli archivi geografici digitali e della multi-attorialit\ue0 nelle dinamiche urbane avvenuta negli ultimi anni ha reso quasi indispensabile un approccio all\u2019interoperabilit\ue0 dei dati territoriali e lo sviluppo delle Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). Su questo versante, mentre buona parte delle questioni tecniche e metodologiche sono pressoch\ue9 consolidate, alcuni elementi di novit\ue0 caratterizzano il panorama recente dei sistemi di informazioni territoriali e ambientali e stimolano qualche riflessione; ne evidenziamo tre: lo sviluppo della sensoristica, la pervasivit\ue0 delle connessioni di rete e la dimensione del tempo reale. Mentre i primi due elementi si riferiscono ad oggetti fisicamente identificabili (nella sostanza si tratta di hardware e reti), il terzo elemento \ue8 invece di tipo immateriale e presenta risvolti politico-culturali e sociali di qualche interesse

Idee per il sistema informativo urbano - due casi studio

Il governo del territorio e la salvaguardia dell\u2019ambiente, probabilmente mai come ora, appaiono indissolubilmente legati alla conoscenza dei fenomeni urbani e territoriali e quindi all'informazione geografica. \uc8 altres\uec maggiormente chiara la natura dei sistemi informativi territoriali quali strumenti principe di quelle che definiamo \u201cnuove tecnologie\u201d oramai indispensabili per qualsiasi attivit\ue0 istituzionale, di quell'insieme di strumenti tra i quali l\u2019onnipresente personal computer svolge un ruolo insostituibile ma che privo della \u201cmateria prima\u201d da elaborare a nulla servirebbe e nulla potrebbe. Nuovi provvedimenti legislativi regionali fanno proprio il ruolo di enorme importanza acquisito dall'informazione geografica rendendo forse pi\uf9 difficoltoso l\u2019avvio di procedure amministrative basate su metodologie nuove e poco esplorate, ma diffondendo in modo pi\uf9 deciso la cultura e le tecniche legate alla trasformazione dei singoli archivi in veri e propri \u201cquadri di conoscenza\u201d condivisi e costantemente alimentati