The INDICATE project aimed to support decision makers and other stakeholders towards transforming their cities to a ‘Smart’ City by developing an interactive software tool to provide dynamic assessment of the interactions between buildings, the electricity grid and renewable technologies. The tool provides recommendations on the best interventions to install within a single building, group of buildings or the entire district, shows how forecasting and optimisation can enable local balancing, and how analysis of energy use and cost can inform financial decisions.
To understand how the decisions made will affect the overall urban environment, a set of Sustainable Urban Indicators were developed so that decisions can be influenced by the potential impact on the city.
INDICATE can be used at any stage of development, from cities at early stages of sustainable planning, to cities with smart grids and widespread use of energy efficient technologies. It can be used by urban planners, public authorities, ICT/Renewable Energy system suppliers and potential investors and developers in a city.
IES coordinated the project, setting the overall objectives of the activities carried out by the eight partners across four EU countries. The key technical activity led by IES was the development of the Virtual City Model (VCM) which exploits the dynamic simulation modelling environment of IESVE, bringing it from building to city level to allow for urban dynamic simulation modelling.