COLOURING SWEDEN - colouring-cities/manual GitHub Wiki
Academic institution/department or academic consortium
Department of Sustainable Environment and Construction, School of Business Society and Engineering, Mälardalen University, Västerås
Host institution/department link
Public research institution verification link
City/Cities selected for initial testing
The initial data integration for the Colouring Sweden platform began with information provided by the City of Västerås. This first dataset formed the foundation of the platform and included core attributes necessary to describe the city’s building stock: building footprint, construction year (age), floor area (size), and land use classification. These variables were selected because they represent essential, comparable, and spatially explicit characteristics that support both technical development and urban analysis. The Västerås dataset enabled testing of the platform’s data structure, visualization functions, and user interface, serving as a pilot case for establishing data integration workflows and setting the framework for future expansion to other Swedish municipalities.
The integration of energy class data into the Colouring Sweden platform represented a key milestone in advancing the platform’s capacity to analyse and visualize building energy performance across Sweden. This integration enabled exploration of correlations between energy efficiency, building age, size, and use, providing valuable insights for identifying renovation priorities and supporting sustainable building practices. The work was presented through both a conference paper and a dedicated workshop at the Applied Energy Symposium: CUE 2025 in Japan, where the paper focused on a comparative case study of Sweden and the UK, highlighting open data strategies and digital tools for accelerating energy transitions. In parallel, a workshop was also organized at the Applied Energy Symposium: Resilient 2025 in Västerås as part of the Colouring Cities Research Program network. The workshop, chaired by the Swedish team in their role as lead of the CCRP Energy Group, facilitated international collaboration and discussion on how open data platforms can support energy-efficient and climate-resilient urban development.
Platform links
Social media links
To be completed
Articles, publications and events links
Hecht, Robert; Hudson, Polly; Gavaldà, Oriol; Hawas, Allan; Palaiologou, Falli; Herold, Hendrik; Larimian, Taimaz Colouring Cities: A network of open platforms to improve the availability of data on the building stock for research, government and society In: 28th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science - Poster Track. Dresden, 2025 (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15336081)
Workshop Applied Energy Symposium Japan CUE2025 https://applied-energy.org/cue2025/workshop
Workshop Applied Energy Symposium Sweden Resilient2025 https://applied-energy.org/resilient2025/workshop
CCRP membership start date
2022
Anticipated launch date
• Demonstration model: Demo platform were launched at the end of 2023
• National Rollout: Now we are looking to accelerating our data collection.
Academic Team
(Please include all significant contributions with to/from date where applicable)
• Principal Investigators: Dr. Allan Hawas, senior lecturer, MDU
• Associate lecturer: Dr. Alaa Krayem, postdoc, MDU
• Department of Sustainable Environment and Construction: Dr. Fredrik Wallin, Head of Department, MDU
• Mälardalen University: Dr. Peter Rohlin, Research Advisor, Director of RESILIENT competence center
• Lecturer in computer science, software engineer: Leo Hatvani
• IoT, Machine learning: Dr. Auday Aldulaimy
• Data scientist: Dr. Xiaodan Shi
Multidisciplinary expertise
We have collaboration with GIS engineers from Västerås city
Key collaborators
Västerås City, Eskilstuna City, Installations företagen, Boverket
Funding
Grant 1:2022: 68900 SEK, Internal fund, Future Energy Center, Mälardalen University.
Grant 2:2023: 280 000 SEK, As a part NEEDs project, funded by the Swedish Energy Agency.
Grant 3: 2024 85 000 SEK, Future Energy Center, Mälardalen University.
Grant 4: 2025 20% software engineer time
Milestones 2023
• Explore the opportunities of using the platform to support the transition of climate neutrality cities.