The urban climate and outdoor air quality of cities that have a positive thermal balance depending on the thermal consumptions of buildings cause an increase of the urban heat island and global warming effects. The aim of this work has been to develop an energy balance using the energy consumption data of the district heating network. The here presented engineering energy model is at a neighborhood scale, and the energy-use results have been obtained from a heat balance of residential buildings, by means of a quasi-steady state method, on a monthly basis. The modeling approach also considers the characteristics of the urban context that may have a significant effect on its energy performance. The model includes a number of urban variables, such as solar exposition and thermal radiation lost to the sky of the built environment. This methodology was applied to thirty-three 1 km × 1 km meshes in the city of Turin, using the monthly energy consumption data of three consecutive heating seasons. The results showed that the model is accurate for old built areas; the average error is 10% for buildings constructed before 1970, while the error reaches 20% for newer buildings. The importance and originality of this study are related to the fact that the energy balance is applied at neighborhood scale and urban parameters are introduced with the support of a GIS tool. The resulting engineering models can be applied as a decision support tool for citizens, public administrations, and policy makers to evaluate the distribution of energy consumptions and the relative GHG emissions to promote a more sustainable urban environment. Future researches will be carried out with the aim of introducing other urban variables into the model, such as the canyon effect and the presence of vegetation.

取决于建筑物的热耗，具有正热平衡的城市气候和室外空气质量会导致城市热岛和全球变暖效应的增加。这项工作的目的是利用区域供热网络的能耗数据开发能量平衡。这里介绍的工程能量模型是在邻域范围内，并且每月通过准稳态方法从住宅建筑物的热平衡获得能量使用结果。建模方法还考虑了可能对城市能源绩效产生重大影响的城市环境特征。该模型包括许多城市变量，例如太阳暴露和建筑环境天空损失的热辐射。使用三个连续供暖季节的每月能耗数据，将该方法应用于都灵市的33个1 km×1 km网格。结果表明，该模型对老建筑区域是准确的。1970年以前建造的建筑物的平均误差为10％，而较新建筑物的误差为20％。这项研究的重要性和独创性与以下事实有关：在GIS的支持下，在社区规模上应用了能量平衡，并引入了城市参数。由此产生的工程模型可以用作公民，公共行政和政策制定者的决策支持工具，以评估能源消耗的分布和相对的温室气体排放，以促进更可持续的城市环境。