Impacts of several urban-sprawl countermeasures on building (space heating) energy demands and urban heat island intensities. A case study

Controlling the urban development and protecting the natural habitats are major challenges for urban planners. With respect to these challenges, we assess the influence of different spatial planning policies on the urban heat island (UHI) intensity and the energy demand for building space heating in Strasbourg–Kehl urban region (France–Germany). For this purpose, the SLEUTH* urban growth model is coupled off-line with the WRF/urban climate modeling system in order to simulate the impacts of three types of urban development (compact, moderately compact, and sprawling development) combined with ecological preservation rules. Two additional software applications, Graphab and MorphoLim, are used to define the ecological and urban spatial structures, and drive the SLEUTH* simulations. The simulations for the year 2010 are consistent with the existing climate data (mean bias on temperatures less than or equal to 1 °C) and annual energy consumptions for building space heating estimated via a building typology energy assessment approach (discrepancies of 20%). Simulated urban development scenarios for the year 2030 show slight effects on UHI intensities and heating energy demands in buildings. Those results suggest that urban sprawl countermeasures have no significant effect on the UHI intensity and building energy requirements when considering a moderate urban growth and realistic planning scenarios.