Buildings offer significant potential to counteract heat islands through green facades or to harness solar energy with PV systems. Which approach makes sense where depends largely on shading from neighboring buildings and trees. Existing solar cadasters primarily map roofs by slope and orientation (see [3]); however, a radiation-based suitability assessment for green facades is largely lacking. The goal of this thesis is to develop and apply a Python-based method that calculates the time-resolved shading of roof and facade areas for the entire city of Leipzig and derives from this a comparable, use-specific suitability assessment for photovoltaics and green facades. The thesis may be written in English or German.

Tasks

1. Data preparation: LoD model, building cadastre (see [2–3]), extract sub-areas
2. Calculate the shading model (separately for a summer day and a winter day)
3. Calculate available roof area using images of the roof surface (includes training a computer vision model to recognize roof elements (windows, chimneys, etc.)
4. Determine an appropriate suitability assessment
5. Validation: PV potential can be compared with the solar cadastre ([3]); no such comparison exists for green roofs

Data sets:

Images of roof surfaces + facades

[1] https://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/2448f6a44d4c495bb772b0b7a39865e9_0/about

[2] https://opendata.leipzig.de/dataset/3d-stadtmodell

[3] https://www.leipzig.de/bauen-und-wohnen/bauen/geodaten-und-karten/3d-stadtmodell-energie-umwelt-klima

Profile:

Degree in computer science or a related field, Python, experience training CV models; experience working with geodata is a plus.