The Aspern Smart City Research project is an urban development project studying the future of energy in cities by optimizing systems used in buildings. The project tests how smart energy systems and intelligent buildings can work simultaneously in a city and integrate residents into the project to ensure they are improving quality of life.
The Aspern Smart City Research project is finding new ways to develop the future of urban development using smart technology. With more than 40% of total energy usage in Europe being consumed by buildings, two-thirds are consumed by residential buildings. The different buildings across the Aspern Smart City are equipped to capture data using sensors. This data is meant to measure temperature, heat, and power consumption. Aspern focuses on 4 pillars for the future of a city: smart user, smart building, smart information and communications technology (ICT), smart grid. The latter 3 are intelligent structures surrounding the user. Smart Users in Aspern live in Smart Buildings (including the residential building), interact with the smart ICT that allows all the systems (including the solar plants and heat pumps) to communicate with each other, and lastly, the smart grid allows users to get the power they need.
Energy efficiency is constantly being monitored as 1.5 million live data points have been collected from the Aspern Smart City project. However, residents are able to remain anonymous when sharing relevant data about their smart units. As energy conservation is prioritized across Aspern, the residential building achieved savings of over 71% of carbon dioxide emissions every year. The project is in phase 2 and by 2028, Aspern Smart City is projecting to develop 240 hectares of land, creating homes and jobs for 20,000 residents.
What did we learn from Aspern?
- Data privacy can be upheld even when sharing highly personal data in a residential smart energy project.
