Vienna Public Utilities and the Technical University of Vienna (TU Wien) are sponsoring 10 doctoral students with the URBEM-DK project. The goal: to visualize and develop innovative energy and mobility scenarios for the infrastructure of the public utilities in Vienna – a real-life version of “SimCity”.

Vienna is growing rapidly and will reach a population of 2 million in just a few years. With these facts in mind, the city council of Vienna agreed in June 2014 to develop a framework of specific, measurable goals for a resource saving, innovative, and socially balanced city of Vienna (Smart City Vienna). Since the winter semester 2013/2014 young researchers have been conceiving, developing and testing energy and mobility scenarios for tomorrow’s Vienna within the framework of URBEM-DK.

With this vision of the future, a 3-D plan of Vienna makes visible for the first time how the energy requirements of individual buildings and city sections or the traffic volume is developed. This development and visualization of complete scenarios is a giant step in order to plan specific investments for the future.

The doctoral candidates include students in the areas of construction engineering, electronics, land-use planning, mechanical engineering, IT and mathematics. Many of the problems being solved through the URBEM-DK program are not confined to any one particular area of knowledge. This encourages the students to take an interdisciplinary approach and to research new methods while solving complex issues. The URBEM-DK program gives them the opportunity  to work extensively with experts from Wiener Stadtwerke (Vienn Public Utilities), Wien Energie (Vienna Energy), Wiener Linien (Vienna Public Transport), Wiener Netze and WienIT.

Numbers & Facts

• Urbem is the object case of the noun urbs (Latin), in English “city”
• “Urban Energy and Mobility System”
• 10 topics/dissertations
• 10 students employed part-time at the TU Wien
• Timeframe: three years, beginning winter semester 2013/2014,
• Financial support by the Vienna municipal utilities : approximately €1 million over three years
• Eight institutes from six departments of the  TU Wien (16 experts)
  • High-rise and technology: construction physics and sound insulation
  • Land-use planning: local land-use planning, spatial simulation and model building as well as sociology
  • Information systems: distributed systems and parallel computing
  • Traffic studies: traffic planning and engineering
  • Energy systems and electrical drives: electrical installations and energy industry
  • Energy technology and thermodynamics: thermodynamics and heat technology
  • Economics: financial and insurance economics
  • Telecommunication
• Vienna municipal utilities and four corporate divisions (10 experts)
  • Wien Energie
  • Wiener Netze
  • Wiener Linien
  • WienIT
• Coordination through the Energy and Environmental Research Center (TU Wien) and the Smart Cities & Regions Coordination Office of the Vienna Public Utilities

Contact

TU Wien & Wiener Stadtwerke

E-Mail: urbem@tuwien.ac.at

Website: urbem.tuwien.ac.at