English

Urban Buildings Energy Consumption Estimation Using HPC: A Case Study of Bologna

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing 2025-11-26 v1 Applied Physics

Abstract

Urban Building Energy Modeling (UBEM) plays a central role in understanding and forecasting energy consumption at the city scale. In this work, we present a UBEM pipeline that integrates EnergyPlus simulations, high-performance computing (HPC), and open geospatial datasets to estimate the energy demand of buildings in Bologna, Italy. Geometric information including building footprints and heights was obtained from the Bologna Open Data portal and enhanced with aerial LiDAR measurements. Non-geometric attributes such as construction materials, insulation characteristics, and window performance were derived from regional building regulations and the European TABULA database. The computation was carried out on Leonardo, the Cineca-hosted supercomputer, enabling the simulation of approximately 25,000 buildings in under 30 minutes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.19463,
  title  = {Urban Buildings Energy Consumption Estimation Using HPC: A Case Study of Bologna},
  author = {Aldo Canfora and Eleonora Bergamaschi and Riccardo Mioli and Federico Battini and Mirko Degli Esposti and Giorgio Pedrazzi and Chiara Dellacasa},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.19463},
  year   = {2025}
}

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