Towards Smarter Cities: Linking Human Mobility and Energy Use Fluctuations across Building Types

Urban areas consume up to 80 percent of the world's total energy production and are growing in size and complexity. At present, urban building energy consumption is largely considered solely in terms of individual building types, neglecting the effects of residents’ location-based activities that influence patterns in energy supply and demand. Here, we examine the spatial fluctuations of these effects. A spatial regression analysis of 3,613,360 positional records containing human mobility and energy consumption data across 983 areas in Greater London and 801 areas in the City of Chicago in residential and commercial buildings over the course of one month revealed spatial dependencies for both residential and commercial buildings’ energy consumption on human mobility. This dependency represents a strong connection with residential buildings’ energy consumption, with a spatial spillover effect. Future energy efficiency strategies should thus reflect the spatial dependencies, creating new ways for residential buildings to play a major role in energy related strategies.