Prof. Ursula Eicker is the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Cities and Communities at Concordia University Montreal. She is a German physicist who received her PhD in Solid State Physics from Heriot-Watt University and her Habilitation in Renewable Energy Systems from the Berlin Technical University. Prof. Eicker has held leadership positions at the Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences and its Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies, and has coordinated many international research projects in the fields of building energy efficiency, renewable energy systems and urban scale simulation.

Since June 2019, she has led an ambitious research program to establish transformation strategies toward zero-carbon cities. Around 50 graduate students work on pathways to zero-carbon cities in the domains of the built environment, renewable energy systems, sustainable transport and circular economy.

Habilitation
Habilitation, Renewable Energy Systems

Technische Universitat Berlin 

Degree Status: Completed

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Felix Ziegler, 1995/6 -

Doctorate
PhD Doctor of Philosophy, Solid State Physics

Heriot-Watt University 

Degree Status: Completed

Supervisors: Wilson, John, 1986/6 - 1989/5

Master's Equivalent
Diploma Studies, Physics

Technische Universitat Berlin 

Degree Status: Completed

Supervisors: Twele, Joachim, 1985/9 - 1986/6

German-African Innovation Incentive Award - 130,000 (Euro)

Federal Ministry of Science Germany

Award for outstanding research in cooperation with Egypt on photovoltaic thermal collectors by the Federal Science Ministry

In collaboration with a real estate developer company and the municipality of Lachine, Prof. Eicker and her team developed concepts for an Eco-Quartier in the former Dominion Bridge area. The involvement of different professionals, organizations, community groups and the municipality bridged the project from theoretical approaches and scenario simulations to financial and social realization potentials. 

The Urban Platform, also referred to as INSEL4Cities, is an urban simulation platform currently under development by the CERC team. INSEL is a graphical programming language used for the simulation of renewable energy systems, it offers ready-made simulation models or users can design completely new models for whatever kind of system they are working with. The objective of INSEL4Cities is to offer cities a platform that can be used to model the city in a holistic way, including features such as buildings and their demands, transportation, networks, waste management, and greenery and ecosystem services.

The objective of this project is to create a basis of knowledge on key topics, characterize data workflows and perform selected data cleaning and integration tasks. The work done by CERC primarily supported the development of the CEE Map prototype for Kelowna BC with findings shared with related initiatives such as the Building Energy Mapping and Analytics Concept Development Study (BEMA-CDS). The group of researchers worked on the development of a generic, systematic workflow to extract useful information from various data sources for building energy modeling requirements and energy retrofit recommendations. The developed workflow has leveraged datasets originated from various sources and scales in multi-operational platforms to analyze and derive the building data for building energy modeling and mapping. Property assessment records were used to discover Kelowna patterns and distribution of dwelling type and vintage. The Kelowna permit dataset provided information on the building and heating permits registered by the municipality.

Residential densification can significantly contribute toward retrofitting existing communities into resilient positive energy districts. A simulation study was conducted for Québec, to determine the impact of densification on energy and space use and analyze future electricity demand in the Quebec province due to electrification of heating and transport. It was found that by densification g and energy efficiency electricity consumption can be reduced by 65% and photovoltaic (PV) roofs could generate nearly three times more electricity than the houses consumed. The combined effect of energy efficient construction and on-site renewable energy production would enable single home owners to shift from consuming 5,640 kWh/yr to producing 3,540 kWh/yr.

The CERC team works on an urban gamified simulation platform. It brings together two worlds that deal with 3D urban data handling and merge both approaches' strong points. On the one hand, the world of Computer Games with 3D cities and various responsive scenarios connected to highly engaging storylines and aim to learn, succeed, and get to the next level or another task. On the other hand, the real-world with urban planning, 2D plans, 3D (BIM) and geospatial urban data. The merger of these two worlds with the help of gamification will lead to a prototype for a product enabling different user groups to find a new way to communicate, learn together, and facilitate co-creation processes in the building and urban planning industry. By applying gamification methodologies to digital twins' use for simulations, a new way of planning urban interventions will be possible. This will boost sustainability transformation and maybe even re- invent the city building, urban development processes and the building industry. The work is done in collaboration with the software company Behaviour.

10,000,000 (Canadian dollar)

Principal Applicant

425,000 (Canadian dollar)

Principal Applicant

Grant: Multiscale urban modeling and monitoring strategies for urban 

CO2 reduction

275,000 (Canadian dollar)

Principal Applicant

100,000 (Canadian dollar)

Principal Applicant

15,000 (Canadian dollar)

Principal Investigator

18,400 (Canadian dollar)

Principal Applicant

20,000 (Canadian dollar)

Principal Applicant

200,000 (Canadian dollar)

Co-applicant

12,000,000 (Canadian dollar)

Principal Investigator

235,500 (Canadian dollar)

Principal Applicant

6,785,000 (Canadian dollar)

Principal Investigator

558,500 (Canadian dollar)

Principal Investigator

564,500 (Canadian dollar)

Principal Investigator

8,345,000 (Canadian dollar)

Principal Investigator

380,000 (Canadian dollar)

Principal Investigator

173,500 (Canadian dollar)

Principal Investigator

169,500 (Canadian dollar)

Principal Investigator