Implications of open access data for low cost KPIs measuring energy efficiency

Carpenter, Martin, Crosbie, Tracey, Crilly, Michael, Dawood, Nashwan and Mhalas, Amit (2014) Implications of open access data for low cost KPIs measuring energy efficiency. In: ICT for Sustainable Places International Conference, 1-3 October 2014, Nice.

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Abstract

In response to the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) most EU member states have established a national energy calculation methodology to measure the energy performance of buildings. The EPBD came into effect on 4th January 2003. Its principal objective is to promote the improvement of the energy performance of buildings through cost-effective measures. To achieve this it is obviously necessary to have a way of measuring and comparing the energy performance of buildings. Each of the European countries has developed a different methodology, tailoring them to the specific characteristics of their country. In the UK the chosen standard was SAP. One common feature of all of these methodologies is that they principally attempt to perform a detailed energy calculation for the house concerned. Doing this requires that considerable quantities of detailed information regarding the house are gathered. When such information can be gathered with minimal effort, such as for new build housing, these approaches are attractive. However problems arise when assessing large numbers of existing housing. In such cases the basic process of visiting the properties to gather the required data consumes considerable amounts of time and effort. In practice the effect of this is that large numbers of existing houses are not assigned a rating. This problem is especially prevalent in the UK, where housing stock turnover is low. This brings into question the suitability of detailed energy assessments as key performance indicators (KPIs) for rating the energy efficiency of existing housing. Recent developments in ICT, and especially the rapid improvement in the availability and quality of freely available street level photography, offer a potential approach which avoids these problems. Namely they have made feasible the idea that it might be possible to assign energy efficiency ratings to houses without ever visiting them in person. While it is clearly not possible to fully replicate the calculation of the traditional energy efficiency related KPIs in this manner, much of the data traditionally gathered by visits can be derived using these data sources. In addition, the potential cost and time savings derived from avoiding visits are very considerable, thus strongly motivating the development and testing of such KPI’s. In this paper we present a discussion of this including which of the features relevant to measuring the energy efficiency of houses can be measured using such remote data, which can’t and the implications of this for the design of KPIs for measuring energy efficiency. We ground this discussion with reference to an example of a KPI derived from simplifying the British standard SAP, which can be calculated purely using freely accessible open access data. This KPI has been tested against the results of traditional manual SAP visits and the results derived from the two found to be closely aligned.

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