SynCity: An Integrated Tool Kit for Urban Energy Systems Modeling

This chapter demonstrates a new tool for the integrated modeling of urban energy systems. Energy is vital to the delivery of urban services, and its role can be considered at many stages in the urban design process. This chapter begins with the planning and layout of a new city and goes through to the socioeconomic structure of the city and its activities and the choice of energy carriers and technologies used to meet the city's energy demands. Unfortunately, existing modeling technologies typically focus on only one of these components and are customized to a single problem context. Therefore, we have developed a "synthetic city" tool kit (SynCity) to facilitate the integrated modeling of urban energy systems across all of these design steps and in a variety of problem environments. After outlining the components of this methodology, we demonstrate how it can be applied to the case of a United Kingdom "eco-town." The discussion then considers the applicability of the SynCity methodology to developing country contexts and highlights potential use cases, policy applications, and deliverables.