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The urban energy infrastructure is facing a rising number of challenges due to climate change and rapid urbanization. In particular, the link between urban morphology and energy systems has become increasingly crucial as cities continue to expand and become more densely populated. Achieving climate neutrality adds another layer of complexity, highlighting the need to address this relationship to develop effective strategies for sustainable urban energy infrastructure. The occurrence of extreme climate events can also trigger cascading failures in the system components, leading to long-lasting blackouts. This review paper thoroughly explores the challenges of incorporating urban morphology into energy system models through a comprehensive literature review and proposes a new framework to enhance the resilience of interconnected systems. The review emphasizes the need for integrated models to provide deeper insights into urban energy systems design and operation and addresses the cascading failures, interconnectivity, and compound impacts of climate change and urbanization on energy systems. It also explores emerging challenges and opportunities, including the requirement for high-quality data, utilization of big data, and integration of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning in urban energy systems. The proposed framework integrates urban morphology classification, mesoscale and microscale climate data, and a design and operation process to consider the influence of urban morphology, climate variability, and extreme events. Given the prevalence of extreme climate events and the need for climate-resilient strategies, the study underscores the significance of improving energy system models to accommodate future climate variations while recognizing the interconnectivity within urban infrastructure.

Dense urban morphologies further amplify extreme climate events due to the urban heat island phenomenon, rendering cities more vulnerable to extreme climate events. Here we develop a modelling framework using multi-scale climate and energy system models to assess the compound impact of future climate variations and urban densification on renewable energy integration for 18 European cities. We observe a marked change in wind speed and temperature due to the aforementioned compound impact, resulting in a notable increase in both peak and annual energy demand. Therefore, an additional cost of 20‒60% will be needed during the energy transition (without technology innovation in building) to guarantee climate resilience. Failure to consider extreme climate events will lower power supply reliability by up to 30%. Energy infrastructure in dense urban areas of southern Europe is more vulnerable to the compound impact, necessitating flexibility improvements at the design phase when improving renewable penetration levels.

The rapid growth of urban areas and concerns over climate change make it vital to improve the energy sustainability of cities. Understanding the complex interactions within different sectors (sectoral) and localities (spatial) of cities plays a crucial role in improving efficiency and sustainability, which is extremely challenging due to the complex urban morphology. State-of-the-art energy concepts do not facilitate a detailed consideration of both sectoral and spatial coupling that energy infrastructure maintains at the urban scale. This has become a significant challenge when designing interconnected urban energy infrastructure. The Urban Cell concept is introduced to address this bottleneck. A novel computational model using a modular approach is introduced to create an interconnected urban infrastructure, including the energy, building, and transportation sectors. Optimal sizing of the distributed energy system (including renewables, energy storage, and dispatchable sources) and optimal urban morphology is determined within a modular unit. A game-theoretic approach is used to model the interactions between urban cells (modular units). The study revealed that the urban cell concept can reduce the net present value of the interconnected energy infrastructure by 37% while increasing the installed renewable energy capacity by 25%. This demonstrates the benefit potential of urban cells and the importance of considering interactions between different sectors and different parts within a city. The Urban Cell concept can be used to present the complex interactions maintained within a city.

Designing building form in urban areas is a complicated process that demands considering a high number of influencing parameters. On the other hand, there has been an increasing trend to design highly fenestrated building envelopes for office buildings to induce higher levels of natural lighting into the workspace. This paper presents a novel optimization framework to design high-performance building form and fenestration configuration considering the impacts of urban microclimate in typical and extreme weather conditions during a thirty-year period of climate data (2010-2039). In this regard, based on the introduced technique and algorithm, the annual energy demand and thermal comfort of over 8008 eligible form combinations with eight different fenestration configurations and seven different building orientation angels were analysed in a detailed urban area to find optimal design solutions in response to microclimate conditions. Results showed that adopting the framework, annual heating, and cooling demand can be reduced by 21% and 38% while maintaining thermal comfort by taking design-based decisions at the early stages of design.

Many cities are striving to develop urban transformation strategies, in order to transit from traditional city to a sustainable city. Improving the energy efficiency of the existing buildings is the key to address climate change mitigation and adaptation. This paper considers different climate scenarios using different series of future climate in four different European cities, namely, Kiruna, Stockholm, Valencia and Madrid. The study adopts the TABULA database to get access to basic construction information. Energy simulation and data analysis using IDA ICE and MATLAB are performed. Based on climate change, an overall retrofitting plan was developed by combining energy-saving retrofit solutions. The results show that in Madrid and Valencia, future heating demand will decrease and cooling demand will increase. In Kiruna and Stockholm, with the increase of the insulation material, the heating demand of the house has decreased, but the cooling demand has shown a downward trend compared with the cases of Madrid and Valencia. The first reason is the introduction of hybrid cooling, and the second is that the average indoor temperature has been maintained at 21 degrees Celsius due to the low outdoor temperature in summer. The findings indicate that in Kiruna, Stockholm, and Madrid it is better to insulate façades to lower the heating demand in winter. In Valencia, it is possible to have relatively low heating and cooling demand without façades insulation as insulated façades require more cooling demand during summer.

Characteristics of efficient roof shape is a part of configuration of efficient architecture which seems to be an ideal in contemporary architecture especially in contemporary architecture of developing countries such as Iran. This study is to investigate two roof shapes in view of air flow and indoor-temperature to find efficient roofs shapes for residential buildings in Tehran. Computational modeling and simulation methods are applied to reach this purpose. A mathematical modeling along with CFD simulation by Fluent Software is used to determine variables. For simulating velocity and pressure path lines κ-ε standard model and finite difference discretization technique is applied. Results show that a sample room with dome roof is about eight Kelvin degree cooler than the same room with flat roof. Also velocity and pressure simulations indicate that roof geometry has a major impact on reducing heat transfer of room and roof temperature. Finally the study suggests some methods for using results in an operational situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]