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SimStadt

Description

SimStadt is an urban simulation environment actively developed at HFT Stuttgart. It originated from a research project completed in 2015 (SimStadt), followed by SimStadt 2.0 (final report in German here).

SimStadt uses CityGML data of real urban environments for energy analyses of buildings, city quarters, whole cities and even regions. The application scenarios range from high-resolution simulations of building heating requirements and potential studies for photovoltaics to the simulation of building refurbishment and renewable energy supply scenarios. Recent developments include the modeling of urban trees, detailed shadowing calculations, load profile generation, energy grid simulation, heat storage simulation, and the use of PVGIS as the default weather data source.

News

Want to explore how urban simulations can help make cities more sustainable and resilient? Join us for two days dedicated to the future of urban transformation.

SimStadt Next brings together researchers, practitioners, and SimStadt users to exchange experiences, explore real-world applications, and discuss how data-driven urban energy simulation can support sustainable and resilient cities.

Day 1 focuses on community exchange, project insights, and planning requirements from both research and practice. Day 2 offers hands-on sessions and interactive workshops exploring simulation workflows and practical applications.

  • SimStadt v2 has been released, and is available here!

  • The source code is expected to be open-sourced by the end of 2026.

Projects

SimStadt is currently used in multiple research projects, including:

  • SektorSim³ - Mobility, energy, and heat transition in urban districts, studying interactions between heat pumps, photovoltaics, and electric mobility.
  • CircularGreenSimCity - Holistic resource-efficient analysis of urban districts, covering building materials, green infrastructure, water, energy, and mobility.
  • Ind-Supply - Climate and resource-optimized heat supply for industrial areas, developing digital planning tools for sustainable heating solutions.
  • CoolingMap - Creation of a building-specific cadastre for the analysis and forecasting of cooling requirements in exemplary urban regions of Germany using AI image recognition, building modeling, neural networks, and geoinformatics.
  • DigiTwins4PEDs - The main concept of the DigiTwins4PEDs project is to use Urban Digital Twins as a digital representation of the real world, opening up a wide range of possibilities for modeling the energy aspects of cities.
  • FlexPED - The aim of FlexPED is to develop an open and intelligent energy data and energy flexibility management system for Positive Energy Districts (PED). The project involves the use of modern tools such as artificial intelligence, agent simulations, and real-time data integration within a next-generation urban digital twin platform.
  • EnergyMap Berlin - The objective of EnergyMap is to develop, establish and evaluate a database-supported multiuser/multisource application including an online platform for the creation of a building-specific digital heat register for the building stock of the state of Berlin.
  • ASCEND - ASCEND aims at creating Positive Clean Energy Districts (PCEDs) and turning them into a default solution in European cities to mitigate the effectsof climate change and enable citizens to live in inclusive, resilient, and smart communities., @ TU München