Tools- of Changes

Focusing on Hard-to-Decarbonize Homes

Hard-to-decarbonize houses are properties that require difficult or expensive retrofits in order to make them green and sustainable. They are thought to represent one-quarter of homes globally, and to be responsible for more than one-quarter of all housing-related carbon emissions. A model was developed to identify homes that are hard to carbonize. If the model identifies a home as being hard to decarbonize, there is an 89% probability that it really is.

Street view images (SVI), aeriel view images (AVI), land surface temperature (LST), and building stock data were used together for the prediction with deep learning. Given image data, the model zeroes in on features like roofs and windows where the greatest loss of heat tends to occur.