The URBEM (Urban Reference Buildings for Energy Modelling) project is financed by the Ministry of Universities and Research (MUR) as a Project of Significant National Interest (PRIN). With participation from 10 Italian universities coordinated by professor Francesco Causone of the Politecnico di Milano’s Department of Energy, the project aims to create a national database of reference buildings to be used with UBEM (Urban Building Energy Modelling) tools capable of assessing energy saving measures for major building stocks through dynamic simulations involving several buildings simultaneously.
This database will make it possible to reduce uncertainty in results of UBEM simulations, providing a reference tool and a methodology of analysis for public authorities (and other property stock owners), who will be helped in their management of building assets, conservation activities and the promotion of policies and incentives.
In the current phase, researchers are defining and characterising the building and energy databases available at the national, regional and local levels. This will be followed by a data mining and data analysis phase and then the implementation of the reference buildings within urban-scale energy simulation software.
