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Procedia Engineering 180 (2017) 1462 – 1472

International High- Performance Built Environment Conference – A Sustainable Built

Environment Conference 2016 Series (SBE16), iHBE 2016

Assessment of urban energy performance through integration of

BIM and GIS for smart city planning
Shinji Yamamuraa,*, Liyang Fana, Yoshiyasu Suzukia
a
Nikken Sekkei Research Institute, Mitsuwa Ogawamachi Bldg. 3F
3-7-1 Kanda Ogawamachi,
Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 101-0052, Japan

Abstract

Smart city has been becoming nowadays a very popular topic that not only in developed countries but also in developing
countries. There are variety of definitions for smart city in different fields and regions. Generally, it aims for a sustainable city
development through the optimal management of the resources and potential, offering a comprehensively higher quality life to
the citizens. The planning of area energy system is one of the most important issues, which is related to the energy generation,
the energy consumption by facilities,transportation system, and any other city infrastructures. Especially for Japan, one of the
countries facing the complex issues of an aging society, disaster management and energy dependency need a new methodologies
for optimal urban energy planning that integrates all information from these sectors. Smart city with highly developed
information and communications technology (ICT) is considered as such an important approach. To encourage the smart city
concept in Japan, this paper proposes a “GIS-BIM” based urban energy planning system to access the optimal technical and
policy solution for readjust city infrastructure beyond the integrated analysis. Firstly, it introduces the concept of Japanese smart
city which covers from urban planning to infrastructure. Secondly, the research proposes a GIS-BIM based urban energy
planning system including the database construction and analysis by GIS, the optimal energy system design aided by BIM and
3D visualization with user-friendly interface. Finally, center of Tokyo is adopted as a case study, suggesting the potential to
access the optimal technical and policy solution.
© 2017
© 2017The TheAuthors.
Authors. Published
Published by Elsevier
by Elsevier Ltd. is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Ltd. This
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee iHBE 2016.
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee iHBE 2016
Keywords: Smart city; geographic information system (GIS); urban energy planning; building information modeling (BIM)

1. Introduction

Smart city is a relevant new concept that has been adopted not only in developed countries but also the
developing countries. It has been clarified in many countries and from various fields with their different concerns.
Corresponding author. Tel.: +81-80-6907-9363; fax: +81-03-5259-0180.
E-mail address: [email protected]

1877-7058 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee iHBE 2016
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2017.04.309
 Shinji Yamamura et al. / Procedia Engineering 180 (2017) 1462 – 1472 1463

Generally, these smart city perception in specific fields have some common understandings. One of them is that
smartization is intended to dealing with the current rapid urbanization and the increase in population. It aims for a
sustainable city development though the optimal management of the resources and potential, offering a
comprehensive higher quality of life to the citizens [1]. Another one is that the concept of smartization is basically
implemented by Information and communications technologies (ICT) with the development of big data, IoT(internet
of things) and Geographic information system(GIS),e.g. [2].
One of the most serious results of rapid urbanization is the energy shortage caused by the population increase and
environmental degradation. According to the existing research, cities are responsible for approximately two thirds of
the global primary energy consumption [1]. Furthermore, there will be a major shift in energy consumption from
industry sectors to urban life, with two thirds of CO2 emission generated by people living and working in the cities.
For example in Japan, the statistic in the year 2014 shows that CO2 emission of industrial sector decreased 6.8%
(compared with 1990) while city life increased 6.6% [3]. Cities will thus offer greater opportunities for economic
development but meanwhile face to the greater environmental stress as well [4].
To deal with the environmental and energy problems caused by urbanization, Net-zero energy building (nZEB) is
expected as one of the most advanced initiatives to realize additional energy reduction on demand side. However,
most of them are separately efforts in a single building. nZEB tends to focus on improving energy using efficiency,
renewable energy utilization and energy management in the buildings, overlooking on the effect or limitation of
other related elements, like the conditions of the existing buildings, economic feasibility and city infrastructure [5].
In order to achieve the advanced low energy like nZEB, the large scale construction project will be considered to be
easier to prepare enough budget than the small and medium scale buildings owning to the high cost. The current
research suggests that even in the largecities like Tokyo, Osaka in Japan, more than 70% of the existing buildings
are occupied by the small scale buildings [6]. These buildings are hard to be the target of nZEB.
Urban energy demand and supply is a far more complex system than a single building, which need to improve the
existing system while putting forward new system in a cooperative way. The technologies or policies should be
decided based on other related energy elements, like the city infrastructure (the energy supply from the generation to
demand side), the distribution of natural energy potential (related to renewable energy) and urban structure (effect to
demand side and infrastructure development). Rather than one single solution, urban energy technical packages,
dealing with the environmental degradation should be an optimal approach, with synergies among various elements
and energy solutions.
Smart city concept is used to be considered as an ideal conceptual plan. However, nowadays its development of
advanced ICT systems has enabled us to gather, unify, analyze and manage the related information comprehensively
and locally, which impossible in the past. In Japan, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has defined
smart community as “a community that effectively leverages ICT to efficiently operate basic, lifeline and other
system in its urban infrastructure and bring greater comfort and convenience to citizens͇[7]. From the year 2010,
Japan government has started Four Major Smart Cities Model projects named “smart city initiatives” [8]. Distributed
energy generation, renewable energy utilization, Area Energy Network and management, a range of measures have
been developed toward achieving the goal for the smart city initiatives. Beside energy system implementation, it
also suggests the importance of compact urban structure and infrastructure from the view point of the aging society
in Japan. However, these model projects usually address the effort of energy or environment on each specific district
separately, lacking the overall image and optimal approach form city level. They proved the effect of latest
technologies but cannot give out optimal combination of the technologies based on the features of other districts in
the city. A comprehensive package of CO2 reduction measure of cities and the tool that can analyze the related
measures and give out the multi-scale solutions to support the urban policy making are necessary.
This paper proposes a ͆GIS-BIM͇ based energy planning system to access the optimal technical and policy
solution for readjust city infrastructure. Firstly, it introduces the Japanese model of smart city covering the concepts
from urban planning to the multiple infrastructures. Secondly, the research proposes a GIS-BIM based energy
planning system including the database construction and analysis by GIS, as well as the optimal urban energy
system design aided by BIM and 3D visualization. Finally, center of Tokyo is adopted as a case study, suggesting
the potential to access the optimal technical and policy solution.
1464 Shinji Yamamura et al. / Procedia Engineering 180 (2017) 1462 – 1472

2. Concepts

2.1. Paradigms for smart city in Japan–a community based development

From the stand point of sociology and the primitive of urban planning, a city is formed of various communities,
the basic and adoptive unit of the city.
One of the targets of smart city for Japan is to make the urban infrastructure flexible and adaptable in a long
perspective, under any situation. Especially for Japan, the rapid aging population poses unavoidable challenges for
city planning. It has to consider the travel distance and the suitable travel mode for the seniors in the city. In
consideration of the lifestyle and living range, the urban planning in Japan is community based, the paradigms
considering aging society, disaster prevention, and energy security.
There are two type of the community planning in the modern age: the neighbored community and the station
centered community. In the urban area, the station centered communities along with transit-oriented development
(TOD) are more popular. Its main concept is that houses, commercial facilities, offices, open spaces, public utilities
and so on are arranged within a 10-15 minute walking distance, or a radius of approximately 600 meters. This
concept effected the expansion of the rail way and urban infrastructure in Japan from the year 1990. Fig. 1 can
suggest that almost the whole Tokyo city are covered by the TOD communities. Compared with TOD in US, Japan
considers more in infrastructure development instead of the controlling of automobile traffic.

Fig. 1. Station centred communities in Tokyo.

2.2. Two core concepts for community smartization

In Japanese smart city planning, a city’s infrastructure system ranging from transportation and energy, to water,
waste, greenery and information should be thoroughly studied, analyzed and planned. When the particular
technology is deployed, the scale and size of its component must be sized and planned to suit each infrastructure
system. An ideal urban structure for a smart city would be one that has optimally combined and integrated all
infrastructure system.
 Shinji Yamamura et al. / Procedia Engineering 180 (2017) 1462 – 1472 1465

There are two concepts for an urban structure, suggested in Fig. 2 , compact development and layer integration.

x Compact development

Compact development means concentrating and combining various urban functions and developing them in a
walkable distance. It is for the concentration of population in the urban area and aging people.
As in Japan, the various forms of urban infrastructures that developed during the period of rapid economic growth
now required renewal. Minimizing the range of the infrastructure to be renewed, as compact development, would
reduce costs and accordingly increase the efficiency in city management.

x Layer integration

Layer integration is a planning approach for extracting various layers on hierarchies that establish urban activities
and then integrating them so that those layers are used in an optimal manner. The form of the community is
determined through the compact development process, and the layer integration process aims to combine urban
function layers, profiting the community from the synergies among all these layers.

Fig. 2. Two concepts for community smartization in Japan.

3. Methodology

Even Japan states the comprehensive concepts for city smartization, it still not yet has such planning methodology
and tools that adopt these concepts. One obstacle is the lack of energy planning tool that can bridge the information
between building design and urban planning. The ICT in smartization can visualize the different issues
simultaneously and uncover their underlying conditions. This helps the planners prioritize the related issues and find
out a cross-domain solution.

3.1. Overall concept

This research proposes a GIS-BIM based urban energy planning tool to support the planning of smart cities.
GIS can interpret the real world by layering the information and integrated with its geographic location. It can
describe the community in multi-scale, space-time dimensions with detail information in attribute table. In this
research, the data of energy elements and related urban infrastructure are unified by the 3D city model in GIS.
Building Information Modeling (BIM), focus in the building scale, describing the building in a geometrical
manner with the detail building information. Recently, BIM are widely cooperatively used with other simulation
software that can predict the effect of every measure in the building or among some of the buildings. It can get the
infrastructure data from the GIS platform and process the energy simulation by using the existing simulation
software. Finally, the result is returned back to the GIS platform to check its effect at the city level.
1466 Shinji Yamamura et al. / Procedia Engineering 180 (2017) 1462 – 1472

The integration of GIS and BIM can interpreted the holistic city. The 3D building model built up by BIM is
located on the city 3D model set up by GIS. The data of building level that related with energy performance are
offered by BIM, while the infrastructure data of city level are offered by GIS. It is the base for energy demand
prediction, which is input into the simulation process to test the effect of proposed energy policies and technologies.
The result of the calculation for a single building is returned back to the city 3D model that supported by GIS.
Comprehensive assessment both in the building and city level is adopted to get the optimal technology package.

3.2. Components and architecture of the tool

Urban energy planning should start with the information from the city level, offering various policy technology
packages to the communities that are in different urban infrastructure conditions. It can be widely used by various
kind of users. For one area energy planning project, the planner can get the urban plan information, the community
features and the appropriate energy technology package by inputting the location of the target area. Further, the
related urban infrastructure information can also be obtained for further optimal design, combining with other
existing simulation software. The averaged users, energy management operators or government can use the 3D
platform for the visualization of the energy consumption of the city, district or building.

Fig. 3. Structure of the tool.

Fig. 3 shows the architecture and components of the tool. It consists of four parts: the database sector, layer
integration sector, optimal design sector and 3D visualization sector.
Database sector and layer integration sector interpret the city by layered data. The building information related to
energy consumption are from BIM, while other urban infrastructure data are offered by GIS. The simplified building
big data from BIM are integrated with the city model that build by GIS. These sectors offer input data for optimal
 Shinji Yamamura et al. / Procedia Engineering 180 (2017) 1462 – 1472 1467

design sector and 3D visualization sector. The users can use the data for energy system optimization or directly
visualize the existing condition of the community by 3D visualization sector.
Optimal design sector, also named as policy support sector, has the database of various technology packages for
different types of community. By inputting the project location, the optimal design sector selects the optimal
technology package by the community features offered by database sector. These data is processed into further
simulation and analysis, selecting the optimal energy solution when it has a high environmental and economic
performance.
Visualization sector adopts the 3D visualization in GIS and BIM to display the existing energy consumption,
simulation result, facility operation and infrastructure condition. It can be developed into the user-friendly system
that combines with web-GIS.

4. Case study of the communities around JR Yamanote line in Tokyo

The communities around JR Yamanote line, one of the most important circular line in the center of Tokyo, are
adopted as case study to suggest the different effect of the technologies in different area.

Fig. 4. Target buildings around JR Yamanote line

4.1. Target area

There are 29 stations for JR Yamanote line. Taking the station as center, the buildings within a radius of
approximately 1000 meters in 12 TOD communities, which contains all the target building (do not overlap within
other community) are selected as targets for case study (Fig. 4). There are around 150,000 buildings in these 12
communities.
The building point data from urban planning which contains the information of location, building type, building
area are used for this research. All the selected buildings are distributed, analyzed in 100 mesh (around 17,000
meshes for all the target area)

4.2. Layered community features

x Building scale
1468 Shinji Yamamura et al. / Procedia Engineering 180 (2017) 1462 – 1472

In the 12 communities, the total building area is around 156 billion m2. It is supposed that the buildings with more
than 50000m2 are large scale building (supposed to be the target of nZEB 1 buildings). Only 28% of the building
area is composed with large scale building, other 72% is small scale building. Fig. 5 shows the distribution of the
building area. It also suggests that most of the large scale buildings are around Tokyo and Shinjuku station.

x Building type

Fig. 6 are the constituent of building type. It suggests that the station with more large scale buildings like Tokyo,
Shinagawa, and Shibuya station have around 50% commercial or office buildings. Other communities have more
residential area. Large building renovation, like nZEB are difficult to be implemented into these residential areas.

Fig. 5. Building area distribution.

Fig. 6. Building type in target communities.

1
nZEB* in the case study refers to the buildings with advanced high low carbon technologies which realizes nearly zero energy
consumption (60%~70% energy consumption)
 Shinji Yamamura et al. / Procedia Engineering 180 (2017) 1462 – 1472 1469

x Existing building energy consumption

In Japan, there is the Data-base for Energy Consumption of Commercial building (DECC) that reports yearly
energy consumption unit, the energy consumption of every type of building in per unit (m 2) every year [9]. This
energy consumption unit and building area are adopted for the estimating existing building energy consumption. It
can be calculated as formula (1)

σ௜ ‫ ݊݋݅ݐ݌݉ݑݏ݊݋ܿݕ݃ݎ݈݁݊݁݃݊݅݀݅ݑܤ‬ൌ σ௜ ‫ܧ‬௜ ൈ ܵ௜ …… …….(1)

i : Building type
Ei:Yearly energy consumption for building type i
Si: Building area for building type i
Energy consumption units used in this research are listed in Table 1.

Table 1. Yearly energy consumption unit for different type of building.

Type Yearly energy consumption unit(MJ/䟝䞉Year)
Commercial 4529
Office 1648
Mixed use 1600
Residential 778
manufactory 1297

The existing yearly energy consumption of the community is displayed by 3D modeling (Fig. 7) and value are
suggest in Fig8 (Existing case). It shows the area around stations with more large scale buildings have high energy
consumption density, which considered as one result of TOD and compact development.

Fig. 7. Annual energy consumption of cases.

x Case setting

The nZEB building renovation tend to be limited in large scale building construction projects because they
usually require the high initial cost. This research suggests tentatively that nZEB can be only implemented in the
buildings, whose building area is more than 50000m2 (considered as the large scale projects). Another method, long
tail method which means the large scale buildings works on high efficiency method (nZEB ) while low cost energy
saving method like implementation of LED, high efficiency air conditioner are supposed to be implemented in small
scale buildings. This research set three cases, listed in Error! Not a valid bookmark self-reference. to compare the
energy conservation effect of these communities.
1470 Shinji Yamamura et al. / Procedia Engineering 180 (2017) 1462 – 1472

Table 2. Case setting

Case Energy conservation measures
Case1 Over 60% energy-reduction renovation (aiming nZEB ) in case over 50000m2
Large-scale development priority No additional measures in cases under 50000m2
model
Case2 Long tail method1 Buildings over 50000m2 renewed to 20% energy-reduction
Buildings under 50000m2 changed lights to LED and use High efficiency air-conditioners˄10%
reduction˅
Case3 Long tail method2 Half of the buildings over 50000m2 renewed to 20% energy-reduction
Buildings under 50000m2 changed lights to LED, use High efficiency air-conditioners and
implement energy management (20% reduction)

5. Results

x Energy saving effect in community scale

Fig. 9 shows the annual energy consumption and energy saving effect in the target communities. The result
suggests that large-scale development priority model are more effective in the communities with more large
buildings. In other communities, the long tail method has better effect.

Fig. 8 Annual energy consumption for target communities.

Fig. 9. Annual energy conservation effect of case.

 Shinji Yamamura et al. / Procedia Engineering 180 (2017) 1462 – 1472 1471

x Energy saving effect in city scale

The energy conservation from the city level, Fig. 8(b), also suggests that more long tail method is used, the greater
total energy saving efforts realized at the district level. It is particularly effective in local cities.

6. Discussion and conclusion

For the future transition of urban structure and energy planning, the city management and engineering department
need a tool to solve different environmental issues across different scales. This study suggested a GIS-BIM based
urban energy planning tool which is able to propose the appropriate solutions for future smart city, considering
urban development and infrastructure regeneration for future smart development. It works as a multi-functioned
system that can (a) combine GIS based data and other data resources across the city, community and building; (b)
model the city with layer integration; (c) predict and simulate the effect of energy conservation technologies in
multi-scale by municipalities and developers; (d) visualize by 3D city modeling.
The results of the study are described as below:
1. It suggested the overview of the urban energy planning tool including its developing concept, architecture
and basic function. The collaborative modeling with GIS and BIM, taking communities as immediate scale,
unifies data across the city and building to supports the comprehensive analysis.
2. The TOD oriented community area around the stations of JR Yamanote line in the center of Tokyo, the
place with high potential of urban development, are adopted as case studies to suggest the feasibility of the
tool. In order to clarify the relationship between energy conservation effect and initial cost, nZEB* method
(stress on the energy conservation effect) and the long tail method were set in the three cases.
3. As the result, advanced low energy buildings like nZEB can effectively cut the big portion of energy
consumption in certain buildings (large building), but in a wide range area, the long tail method has shown
the potential to realize a higher energy conservation effect. Therefore, with this tool, it is possible to find out
the method that can efficiently and economically reduce the energy consumption in a large area.
4. The result can also suggest that for the whole city, various energy policies and technology packages in
consideration of the district features are required to realize the energy conservation in city level.
5. Further, the projects in developing or emerging countries do not always start from the appropriate climate,
economic and social conditions that would allow cutting-edge technologies or design methods, which is
cultivated in advanced countries. It is necessary to propose schemes that combine advancedtechnologies
with the conventional methods that fit to the local conditions of the projects site. Therefore, the tool
proposed in this research is more preferable for these countries.
This research generally offered an architecture of the tool and analysis by GIS as the first step. The future work
will develop a middle ware for GIS and BIM data integration, query and visualization. More details of technologies
and its cost performance should be analyzed and the energy plan support system will be made available to city
management and engineering in the end. Furthermore, for implementation of the tool in other developing countries
in Asia, the research will conduct widely data collection, case studies and provide different technology packages to
these countries.

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