Engineering modelling of building energy consumption in cities: Identifyingkey variables and their interactions with the built environment."

This paper focuses on a spatial domestic energy framework of sub-city areas in the United Kingdom using Newcastle upon Tyne as a case study. The framework estimates the energy end-use at the single dwelling level on three aggregate scales: district, neighbourhood and community. The framework uses two aggregation approaches, one using an approximated prototype-cluster of similar dwellings at the district scale and the other using a novel, sub-city DEM modelling of building and its micro-cohesive energy structures in neighbourhoods and communities. The validation strategy compare the modelled gas and electricity values in three representative districts against the DECC values in two aggregate hierarchical areas for electricity and gas: the DECC Medium Layer Super Output Area (MLSOA), and the Lower Layer Super Output Area (LLSOA). Our work discusses this framework in key areas: the availability of data, the number of surveyed variables and data processing methods for filling blanks in order to have an individual dwelling’s complete energy Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) profile, methods to provide evidence for finding patterns residing in the data set, methods for estimating the annual composite (gas and electricity) energy consumption for individual and aggregated dwellings, the validation strategy, the uncertainties associated in the data and model, and scaling and replication in other cities.