Review of district-scale energy performance analysis: Outlooks towards holistic urban frameworks

Over the past few decades, the world has experienced a major population shift towards urban areas resulting in environmental degradation and increased energy consumption. To combat these challenges, energy efficiency measures are being deployed to improve the performance of different entities within urban built environments. However, effective implementation of such measures often requires a holistic approach to account for existing interrelated and complex relationships between entities at the urban scale. This paper presents a distillation of salient facts and approaches for energy performance evaluation of districts. The studies are reviewed in three sections; (1) concepts defining district energy performance, (2) approaches and methodologies for district energy performance evaluation and (3) system interactions between district entities. The state of the art review reveals that several challenges exist in the initial stages of energy performance assessment of districts. The suggested framework in this paper addresses this issue through pre-processing of data related to entities such as transportation systems and buildings. The framework classifies the available information under three potential categories, namely, 'subject and Scope’, ‘Input Data Management’ and ‘Methods’. This categorisation results in easier integration of multidisciplinary aspects of entities involved in district energy performance assessment.