iGUESS - A web based system integrating Urban Energy Planning and Assessment Modelling for multi-scale spatial decision making

The integrated Geospatial Urban Energy Information & Support System (iGUESS) is currentlybeing developed as part of an EU project to reduce CO2 emissions in five Europeancities. The project is intended to create a decision support platform providing access todistributed data sources and analysis and modelling tools through a single web-basedinterface. The final goal is to furnish the participating cities with current and projectedspace-time energy layers for their urban planning process. iGUESS provides access totools that compute local renewable energy potentials and other spatially bound mitigationaction potentials, like the construction of green roofs or installation of renewable energytechnologies. These potential maps are fed into the non-spatial techno-economic assessmentmodel ETEM to find the best combination of planning actions subject to a setof objectives (e.g. emission targets) and constraints (e.g. budget), helping urban planersdeciding where, on what technologies and when to invest. The interoperability betweenmodels and data is guaranteed by the usage of the web service standards specified bythe Open Geospatial Consortium. The main iGUESS interface for decision makers is aweb-based GIS, which facilitates the spatial comparison of different model outputs. Thesystem also provides a component for impact assessment by comparing the results ofdifferent scenarios and making use of spatial multi-criteria analysis algorithms. Anotheraspect of iGUESS is the incorporation of uncertainties associated with input data andmodelling results into the decision support.