Resilience and Energy transition through Sustainable Energy systems: a methodological Tool for the Urban Districts

Nowadays, the EU is promoting the resilience and energy transition of nations to reduce GHG emissions levels up to 40% by 2030, guarantee resilience and support sustainable innovations in cities. To support the energy transition of the community, renewable energy sources (RES) and energy systems are fundamental players in an urban district as well as the energy networks (thermal, electrical, transport etc.). These fields need to be matched together to provide a global view of the energy transition at the urban level. This integration could be assessed using multicriteria analysis (MCA) methods, being a suitable vector for supporting complex decisions according to pre-determined criteria and objectives. Even though those kinds of decision systems are widely used in literature, few of them can provide a global vision of the main current problem of an urban district. Moreover, many efforts are also required to cover several gaps, such as the applications of new technologies in a city context (micro-energy systems and hydrogen), implementation of lighting grids and the last generation thermal networks (low-temperature district heating and cooling). Last, but not least, there still is a lack in terms of environmental, energy and resilience parameters, able also to describe natural disasters or sudden changes linked to externalities. Today, it is completely missing a holistic tool to guide decision-makers and designers to the transition district towards an energy district. And this is the final aim of this project. RESET_UrbanDistricts aims at providing a knowledge bridge in this field to guide decision-makers and designers in the transition of a district towards a resilient and energy district covering all the evidence lacks.