Urban Building Energy Modeling
for Urban Design and Energy System Engineering with the Open-Source City Energy Analyst (CEA)

#Research #Teaching #Practice

What is CEA?

The City Energy Analyst (CEA) is an urban building energy modeling (UBEM) platform and one of the first open-source initiatives of computation tools for the design of low-carbon and highly efficient cities. The CEA combines knowledge of urban design and energy systems engineering in an integrated simulation platform. This allows to study of the effects, trade-offs and synergies of urban design scenarios and energy infrastructure plans. The CEA Team is committed to empowering researchers and practitioners to plan and design low-carbon cities.

Popular CEA Features

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Want to extend CEA Features?
CEA is plug-in ready.
Build your own and let us know.

Need inspiration?

Check out how other CEAers have been using CEA in their research projects, case studies, teaching, student theses, and read CEA publications.

Image source: Z. Shi, J.A. Fonseca, A. Schlueter, A review of simulation-based urban form generation and optimization for energy-driven urban design, Build. Environ. 121 (2017) 119–129.

Multiple scales,
Multiple interfaces

Born in 2013 at ETH Zurich, the open-source CEA has enabled architects, urban designers and engineers worldwide to perform building energy simulations and conduct research on multiple scales from neighbourhoods to cities.

CEA engages a multi-interface strategy for modellers of various UBEM proficiencies. Our user-friendly CEA Dashboard could be easily picked up by users with no programming capacities. Researchers and software developers are advised to use the CEA Console/Command Line. Currently, the CEA Team is exploring the possibilities of introducing CEA on Web. Meanwhile, connections to Rhino/Grasshopper are possible.