The tran­si­tion to cli­mate-neu­tral cities and munic­i­pal­i­ties inevitably requires com­pre­hen­sive ener­gy bal­ances of the areas under con­sid­er­a­tion. These bal­ances serve as a foun­da­tion for iden­ti­fy­ing poten­tial mea­sures, exploit­ing ener­gy syn­er­gies, and guid­ing ren­o­va­tion or opti­miza­tion strate­gies. In this way, tem­po­rary and local­ized ener­gy sur­plus­es can be made vis­i­ble and effec­tive­ly harnessed.

The con­ven­tion­al approach to estab­lish­ing munic­i­pal or urban ener­gy bal­ances relies pri­mar­i­ly on aggre­gat­ed ener­gy-con­sump­tion data. How­ev­er, this method yields only a sta­t­ic assess­ment of the cur­rent state and does not allow for direct visu­al­iza­tion of ener­gy flows, stor­age poten­tials, ren­o­va­tion effects, or the inte­gra­tion of renew­able ener­gy sources.

In con­trast, dynam­ic cal­cu­la­tion mod­els enable hourly ener­gy-bal­ance sim­u­la­tions of com­plex sys­tems and can direct­ly cap­ture the influ­ence of cli­mat­ic con­di­tions, user behav­ior, and renew­able ener­gy poten­tials. Such mod­els are now avail­able for many fields, offer­ing high­ly pre­cise sim­u­la­tions of diverse sys­tem com­po­nents. The VITALITY and VITALITY DISTRICT projects have already laid the ground­work for rapid, dynam­ic ener­gy-bal­ance cal­cu­la­tions for build­ings, urban dis­tricts, and a range of ener­gy systems.

VITALITY CITY extends this capa­bil­i­ty to entire cities. Build­ings, land uses, and ener­gy sys­tems can be auto­mat­i­cal­ly cap­tured using pub­licly avail­able geospa­tial data. A para­met­ri­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed mod­el is used to deter­mine dynam­ic ener­gy demands, while the solar poten­tial of build­ing sur­faces is auto­mat­i­cal­ly inte­grat­ed into the ener­gy bal­ance. Ener­gy-con­ver­sion algo­rithms allow for the rapid cal­cu­la­tion of CO₂ emis­sions, enabling both eco­log­i­cal and eco­nom­ic assess­ments of urban areas. The over­ar­ch­ing objec­tive is to gen­er­ate reli­able insights into ener­gy demands, ener­gy poten­tials, and pos­si­ble path­ways for achiev­ing cli­mate neu­tral­i­ty at the munic­i­pal, urban, and ulti­mate­ly nation­al scale.

VITALITY CITY can be applied to both exist­ing and new­ly planned urban struc­tures. Urban expan­sion sce­nar­ios and their sys­temic impacts can be analysed in a tar­get­ed man­ner. Exist­ing cal­cu­la­tion mod­els are com­ple­ment­ed and inte­grat­ed into a coher­ent, appli­ca­tion-ready tool.

The VITALITY CITY tool is designed to uti­lize cur­rent­ly avail­able geo­da­ta to rep­re­sent the ener­gy sit­u­a­tion and poten­tial of cities and munic­i­pal­i­ties and to derive spe­cif­ic mea­sures for achiev­ing cli­mate neu­tral­i­ty. Its applic­a­bil­i­ty will be val­i­dat­ed through a field study in the City of Graz. The find­ings from this pilot will feed into fur­ther devel­op­ment and future deploy­ment. More­over, the project aims to iden­ti­fy gaps in exist­ing data infra­struc­tures and to sup­port the mean­ing­ful pub­li­ca­tion of rel­e­vant data—such as ener­gy per­for­mance cer­tifi­cates. Trans­par­ent and accu­rate report­ing of CO₂ emis­sions is a fun­da­men­tal pre­req­ui­site for a cli­mate-neu­tral Aus­tria. The knowl­edge gen­er­at­ed through VITALITY CITY can be applied glob­al­ly and con­tribute to inter­na­tion­al efforts to mit­i­gate cli­mate change. Thus, the project deliv­ers a con­crete con­tri­bu­tion toward a sus­tain­able and cli­mate-resilient future for urban environments.