Mitigating Operational Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Ageing Residential Buildings Using an Urban Digital Twin Dashboard

Abstract

With the increasing stock of ageing infrastructure and resource constraints in Singapore, related risks and carbon emissions can be mitigated through long-term resilience planning, automated building inspection, and effective maintenance. Sustainable actions are needed to maintain Singapore's ageing infrastructure. Hence, a state-of-the-art control and management system is required in the form of smart city digital tools. We introduce an Urban Digital Twin (UDT) dashboard for decision-makers in Singapore's operational building greenhouse gas (GHG) emission mitigation and decarbonisation initiatives. Based on multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), a Potential for Intervention (PFI) map was created to rejuvenate the building system. Decision-makers can use the PFI map to prioritise the rejuvenation of low-carbon building systems in the built environment. A heat map of the PFI results shows which buildings need urgent rejuvenation based on critical parameters. This method is used in the dashboard to generate PFI maps. The dashboard allows users to modify parameter weights according to their priorities and automatically updates the map. Users can plan an intervention for buildings with higher PFI values once the map is generated. Our research findings can help develop standards for accounting for operational GHG emissions, setting emission limits, and planning decarbonisation in the built environment sector.

Keywords: Smart Cities Semantics, Urban analytics, Energy modelling