Enhanced cellular automata model for the simulation of electricity demand at the urban scale

A comprehensive understanding of the relationship between the urban dynamics and energy use is necessary for the formulation of effective policies towards energy-efficient and sustainable cities. Cities are complex systems whose structure emerges from the bottom up. They are composed by autonomous agents that interact with each other and with their environment developing self-organizing adaptive systems. Cellular Automata (CA) models have been extensively adopted to study growth and expansion of cities. In this work, such a model is enhanced by the integration of mobile agents representing key urbanization drivers: industry, commerce and high-income residential groups. Using this hybrid model, urban growth scenarios can be modeled while distinguishing the influence of different agent types on the urbanization processes. The resulting urban form (shape, size, density and configuration of the urban area) is then coupled with a bottom-up electricity demand model. In this way, the spatially explicit urban transformations are included in the calculation of the electricity demand resulting in more realistic scenarios. The described approach is used to project the electricity demand of Guadalajara, Mexico.     «

A comprehensive understanding of the relationship between the urban dynamics and energy use is necessary for the formulation of effective policies towards energy-efficient and sustainable cities. Cities are complex systems whose structure emerges from the bottom up. They are composed by autonomous agents that interact with each other and with their environment developing self-organizing adaptive systems. Cellular Automata (CA) models have been extensively adopted to study growth and expansion of...     »