Cities ready for energy crisis: Building urban energy resilience

Cities ready for energy crisis: Building urban energy resilience

Van den Dobbelsteen, A.A.J.F.
Keeffe, G.
Tillie, N.M.J.D.

Architecture

Architectural Engineering +Technology

2013-06-27

Various sources indicate that threats to modern cities lie in the availability of essential streams, among which energy. Most cities are strongly reliant on fossil fuels; not one case of a fully self-sufficient city is known. Engineering resilience is the rate at which a system returns to a single steady or cyclic state following a perturbation. Certain resilience, for the duration of a crisis, would improve the urban capability to survive such a period without drastic measures. The capability of cities to prepare for and respond to energy crises in the near future is supported by greater or temporary self-sufficiency. The objective of the underlying research is a model for a city – including its surrounding rural area – that can sustain energy crises. Therefore, accurate monitoring of the current urban metabolism is needed for the use of energy. This can be used to pinpoint problem areas. Furthermore, a sustainable energy system is needed, in which the cycle is better closed. This will require a three-stepped approach of energy savings, energy exchange and sustainable energy generation. Essential is the capacity to store energy surpluses for periods of shortage (crises). The paper discusses the need for resilient cities and the approach to make cities resilient to energy crises.

engineering resilience
energy crisis
urban energy system
self-sufficiency
urban metabolism

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:51f6f87b-ba10-49ab-85b2-76cc3dd5b488

CIB (International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction)

978-85-65823-05-0

SASBE 2012: 4th CIB International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environments, Sao Paulo, Brasil, 27-30 June 2012

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2012 The Author(s)