Thou Shall Not Shadow Thy Neighbour: Developing an Urban Planning Tool for the H2020 E-Shape Project
Résumé
Nowadays, urban areas are seeing growing trends both in urban development and photovoltaics (PV) deployment, with clear changes in their orography and aesthetics. However, these two movements do not necessarily share a coordinated strategy. There are guiding regulations which aim, in part, to ensure the exposure to sunlight. While this is traditionally seen from the perspective of human health impacts and the right to natural lighting [1], there have also been regulatory initiatives and proposals aiming to protect solar energy projects [2,3]. However, the lack of adequate assessment tools limits the definition of such policies. This work presents an urban planning tool developed in the scope of the e-shape H2020 project [4] which evaluates the impact of new urban projects in terms of the PV potential of surrounding areas. To achieve this, two main technical challenges were addressed: i) the development of an on-the-fly, As a Service (AaS), urban PV modelling framework; and ii) the implementation of an editable Digital Surface Model (DSM) which does not compromise the original data. It is also of interest to note that this tool is aligned with the FAIR data principles (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability). In terms of functionality, end-users can add or remove existing infrastructures, modifying the existing urban orography, and obtain a spatio-temporal analysis, with both numerical and visual representations. With the expected growth of PV in urban environments and the fact that urban development outpaces the decades-long period needed to optimally exploit this technology, being able to model this impact will become more and more crucial in guiding future urban development regulations.