RETROfitter

Part of the TOOLS4CITIES suite, this will provide a simple way to see the most cost-effective ways of reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions of buildings using real-time simulations and a gamified user-interface.

Key project details

Research lead	Ursula Eicker Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Communities and Cities Founding co-director, Next Generation Cities Institute
Researchers involved	Christopher Gibbs Senior advisor, Urban Simulation Platform & Gamification RETROfitter lead Jiarui (Ray) Li Core software team
Years	Ongoing
Key words	#seriousgames #digitaltwins # HCI #UI #UX #interaction

Features

The left side displays a list of wall materials. The right section provides detailed information about the selected wall material including its resistance, embodied carbon, disposal carbon, price, total thickness and a visual representation of the wall layers from exterior to interior.

Retrofit visually

See at a glance the range of options for improving the thermal performance of your building, including walls, floors and roofs, the windows, the heating-cooling system. Configure mixed building usage and even add renewables to your roof space.

A screenshot of an energy simulation interface for a building. The left panel provides details such as the total area of the building, the year, and the climate reference city, which is Montreal. To the left, there is a bar chart displaying monthly energy demand in kilowatt-hours.

Real-time simulation

Connect via a Web-API to our powerful HUB backend which calculates the energy, emissions and cost implications of your choices in real time. Results are displayed in gorgeous 3D interactive charts that are super easy to understand.

A 3D bar graph from an energy management simulation interface showing daily heating demand in megawatt-hours for each day of November.

Compare scenarios

There are many approaches to retrofitting a building, depending on what you wish to optimize for. This tool will allow you to create multiple retrofit scenarios and then compare their metrics side by side to better inform your final strategy.

Next-Generation Cities Institute