The partners of the IDEE project met at the IUAV – Venice University Institute of Architecture – for the periodical update on the progress of the activities, especially at this moment, where the first inputs to develop the expected tools are starting to take shape.

The meeting take place after the survey campaign with the collection of 1930 questionnaires from the pilot region of Feltre and 557 for the City of Maniago, thus exceeding 2400. The questionnaires allowed to collect a large number of information on the use of energy by citizens (annual consumption, type of fuel, renewable sources, etc.) and on the state of the buildings (square footage, year of construction, energy class, etc.) of the Municipalities.

In this period the partners have been involved in the extraction of the data provided by the two pilot regions (Feltre and Maniago) and in their re-elaboration, in order to define the real energy situation of the residential sector and hypothesize solutions that reduce waste and pollution. In addition to this, simulations are being carried out with the Rivus programming language in GIS, adapted to the needs of the project, which is the basis for the construction of the framework that will be an instrument for the policymakers of the areas involved  for evaluations in the field of energy.

The energy scenarios of the pilot regions, which are emerging thanks to the data collected and the first assessments underway, are at the same time interesting and complex. In particular, it is evident that in the evaluation of the possible “energy systems” the productive realities –  that are in the neighborhood of the areas investigated- play a very important role. This is the situation of Maniago and Feltre in particular: these big production companies, with potentially interesting industrial processes for the exchange and/or recovery of energy and heat, must be taken into consideration, together with private or public buildings, to define truly complete scenarios on which building hypotheses for energy improvement.

In the next months, relations and meetings will continue with these companies of great importance both in the territory of Feltre and in Maniago to deepen the collection of data and information to support the analyzes carried out by researchers.

The Venetian meeting also included a visit to the mini-heating plant installed on the roof of IUAV – designed by professors and students – and to Artec, the laboratory of materials for architecture that gave the opportunity to touch innovative materials that play an important role in the energy saving of buildings.

The next technical meeting is scheduled in July in Salzburg and in the meantime the research team will continue in the joint work also through cross-border staff exchanges, meetings with companies and public bodies, definition of scenarios and economic analyzes to be integrated with the technical evaluations on energy systems.