With the acceleration of urbanization on a global scale, combined with the ever-worsening climate crisis, major challenges exist in the search for resilient and sustainable solutions in the areas of energy and water. In particular, urban populations in tropical regions are growing rapidly, causing sharp increases in cooling demand, exacerbating urban heat island effects, and placing immense pressure on local energy infrastructure. Water-borne (“hydronic”) approaches to cooling are more environmentally sustainable compared to fossil fuel- and refrigerent-based approaches, and hydronic cooling has seen adoption largely in buildings and complexes with individual chiller plants. 

This doctoral project will investigate exciting new ways of digitalizing district cooling systems in megacity environments with hot and humid climates through Digital Twins (DT), including system design and installation support, optimized control, system monitoring, and fault detection, with a major emphasis on scientifically sound modelling and prediction, together with rapid replicability so that solutions can be quickly deployed in new districts.Work will be undertaken in close collaboration with NTU ERI@N who will develop realistic multi-scaled demonstrators (room, floor, building, district levels) for real world-scale testing, verification, and validation.

• Aalborg University (lead)
• Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)
• Grundfos