NEED

© NEED

Effective energy system planning requires the intensive use of extensive data and information drawn from a variety of levels and domains. This includes, but is not limited to, LoD2 data, infrastructure details, geospatial and cadastral data, energy consumption curves, primary energy demand, technical plant specifications, mobility data, and geothermal potential.

Depending on the specific planning objectives and use cases, this data must be gathered from diverse sources and appropriately processed. However, this data acquisition and preparation process must often be repeated for each new use case, making it both time-consuming and costly.

As the energy sector transitions towards renewable sources—such as wind, solar, and geothermal—it becomes increasingly important to understand the interconnections across systems. From both building- and infrastructure-level perspectives, the supply of heat and electricity remains central, with additional relevance to gas, water, and mobility systems. Despite this, many of these sectors lack high-quality, machine-readable data that is efficiently linked across domains. Issues surrounding data origin, transparency, and quality assurance further complicate planning processes.

This research project addresses these challenges by developing a digital platform designed to serve as a foundational planning tool. The platform leverages ontologies to semantically link data, creating a modular "construction kit" for integrated planning tasks—spanning from individual buildings to entire infrastructure systems. Through automated, model-based, cross-domain analysis, the platform enables streamlined and efficient planning. The integration of transparent, verified, and digitally accessible data from the NEED database significantly improves data quality while reducing the time and cost involved in energy planning.

My Role in the Project

Within this project, I am contributing to several key tasks aimed at enabling robust data integration and practical implementation:

• Development of a Unified Taxonomy and Ontology: Designing a standardized data structure to facilitate consistent integration and interpretation of diverse datasets across energy domains.
• Use Case and Application Development: We identify and define practical scenarios for platform usage to ensure the system meets real-world planning needs.
• Tool Integration: We work on linking external tools and software with the NEED platform, enhancing its functionality and usability in various planning workflows.