Interoperable, Smart, and Sustainable Urban Energy Systems

Abstract

The decarbonization of cities is a priority for the European Union (EU). Fossil fuel and gas supplies need to be replaced with local renewable energy sources with a relevant increase in efficiency within 20 years in order to cap environmental, social, and economic negative impacts, and this cannot do significant harm. In this context, smart city development frameworks focused on mitigation, adaptation, and measurement not only collaborate in providing governance for sustainability but also facilitate the materialization of such sustainability along lifecycle engineering processes for decarbonization solutions. To achieve these goals, we must face the interoperability challenge and make information accessible for engineering and sustainability governance systematically. A starting point is to validate the models, data, and harmonized metadata. In this paper, the authors provide results that validate the utility of a conceptual model for interoperable smart and sustainable urban energy systems (ISSUESs). The validation is carried out for an urban energy system with a high potential for decarbonizing southern European smart cities and integrating several commercial solar technologies using academic bibliography and natural language processing (NLP) techniques.