Sustainability assessment of three districts in the city of Donostia through the NEST simulation tool

Abstract

Nowadays, urbanists are facing increasing demands regarding the performance of urban development projects in terms of environment, quality of life and socio‐economic issues. In order to address these increasing demands, actors involved in urban development projects need tools capable of assessing their impacts. These tools should also enable the comparison of all potential scenarios. Taking into account these needs, Nobatek and Tecnalia have developed NEST (Neighbourhood Evaluation for Sustainable Territories), which is one of the first tools that allows for a simultaneous environmental, economic and social analysis at the district scale, with a life‐cycle perspective. Using NEST, the authors of this work carried out an environmental and social evaluation of three districts in the city of Donostia, in the framework of the Essai Urbain research project. The evaluation first consisted of analysing baseline environmental impacts of the three districts. Then, with the objective of reducing environmental impacts and increasing social well‐being, the authors proposed several refurbishment scenarios for the studied districts, focusing on energy issues. The study was performed in close collaboration with the city of Donostia, which enabled the identification and selection of the most relevant scenarios from an environmental standpoint. Moreover, the NEST software has caught the attention of the project's stakeholders regarding environmental issues. Finally, NEST seems to be an interesting alternative in accounting for sustainable development issues from the early stages of urban development projects.

Two-Stage Multi-Objective Meta-Heuristics for Environmental and Cost-Optimal Energy Refurbishment at District Level

“…This district is selected for being a representative district of the city in which different buildings with a mix of uses within the ground floors (commercial, garages and small industries) are being gradually replaced by new residential buildings. Most of the information required for modeling the baseline scenario of Gros has been obtained in close collaboration with the municipality of Donostia-San Sebastian and based on assumptions from previous studies [57], as shown in Table 8. Regarding the buildings' information, such as: the energy rating, heating system or heritage protection level, Table 9 shows the main characteristics required as inputs for simulating the use case, i.e., HFA, useful roof or opening and opaque faςade surface.…”

A Multi-objective Harmony Search Algorithm for Optimal Energy and Environmental Refurbishment at District Level Scale

“…Screenshot of the Gros district case study. The modelization and the environmental assessment has been carried out by NEST tool [12].…”

“…Some of this data is based on assumptions from previous studies [12]. Table 2 shows the main characteristics of Gros district regarding the relationship between the energy certification of the buildings, their Energy Demand (ED), the quantity of buildings, the Heated Floor Area (HFA) and the amount of surface per building typology.…”

Environmental Assessment of University Campuses: The Case of the University of Navarra in Pamplona (Spain)

“…), (II) life cycle inventory, (III) life cycle assessment, and (IV) interpretation [19]. To evaluate the impacts of buildings and cities with an LCA focus, various digital tools have been developed, among which we highlight the Neighbourhood Evaluation for Sustainable Territories (NEST) software [24]. It considers the impact of different stages of the life cycle associated to different processes of the urban environment, including transportation or public lighting.…”

“…It considers the impact of different stages of the life cycle associated to different processes of the urban environment, including transportation or public lighting. Thus, in comparison to other tools, NEST takes into account building energy but also energy transportation, energy water, energy public lighting, solid waste, and socioeconomic impacts of the building environment on the district or city studied [24,25]. It is worthy to underline that it is an agile and fast tool for carrying out analysis of the baseline scenario and the improvement hypotheses.…”