The Environmental and Energy Renovation of a District as a Step towards the Smart Community: A Case Study of Tehran

As the world’s third-largest oil and natural gas producer, Iran consumed enormous amounts of non-renewable energy during the last twenty years. There are many obsolete buildings in the Iranian building stock, which required energy renovation. Many studies in the literature proposed energy retrofitting strategies to increase the efficiency of buildings, but few of them involve an energy network for the entire neighbourhood (such as district heating). Moreover, energy renovation is not sufficient to improve the smartness level of a community; in fact, it is essential to evaluate sustainable and social aspects. In this direction, this study aims to develop a comprehensive analysis of the current criticalities of a district in Tehran (District 5), proposing strategies to face the pollution of the city, provide a healthy environment for the citizens, and renovate the old buildings. The application of a decision support method is presented to set a priority ranking, pointing out the positive and negative impacts of each evaluated scenario. The energy renovation solution involved the installation of two storage tanks and solar collectors in each building and the connection with the district heating powered by waste to the energy plant. A multi-level car parking system and a noise mapping application were evaluated to solve mobility and pollution problems. Moving to the results, the priority ranking assesses that the most affordable action is the installation of a Solar Water Heater since energy and environmental indicators demonstrate its efficacy compared to the other solutions.