Data collection, automated
Select any area in the world. Get a complete digital replica of buildings and streets — year of construction, usage, energy, emissions, costs.
Urban Building Energy Modeling
for Urban Decarbonisation Design
with the Open-Source CEA-4
Try CEA-4 Pro
WHAT IS CEA
An integrated simulation platform for urban energy systems.
CEA combines urban design and energy systems engineering. It lets you study the effects, trade-offs, and synergies of urban design scenarios and energy infrastructure plans — at the scale of a neighbourhood, a district, or a city.
Born at ETH Zürich in 2013, CEA has empowered architects, urban designers, and engineers in over 75 countries to simulate building energy performance and explore decarbonisation strategies. The CEA Team is committed to empowering researchers and practitioners to plan and design low-carbon cities.
From geospatial data to optimised districts.
Energy forecasts in minutes
Hourly demand predictions for hundreds of buildings. Compare scenarios for present and future districts side by side.
Renewable energy potentials
Solar on roofs and façades, geothermal, sewage heat. Estimate what's possible before you build.
District energy systems
Design and optimise heating and cooling networks. Trade off cost, emissions, and primary energy across the whole district.
Low-carbon scenarios
Techno-economic potential of low-carbon technologies. Compare capital and operational costs, GHG emissions, and Pareto-optimal designs.
EXTEND
Plug-in ready
Need a custom workflow? CEA is plug-in ready. Build your own and let us know.
Plug-in docs →
NEED INSPIRATION?
See CEA in the wild.
Check how CEAers use CEA in their work.
JOIN THE COMMUNITY
Become a CEAer today.
Seven ways to be part of the CEA community — from using the tool, to contributing code, to teaching with it.
CORE TEAM
The people behind CEA.
Hosted by the Chair of Architecture and Building Systems at ETH Zürich ↗ and uuen Company ↗, with a global community of contributors.
Prof. Dr. Arno Schlueter
Co-inventor and Product Sponsor
Dr. Zhongming Shi
Product Lead
Reynold Mok
Scrum Master, Software Engineer
Dr. Martín Mosteiro-Romero
Dev Team, TU Delft
Mathias Niffeler
Dev Team, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa)
Yiqiao Wang
Dev Team, Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA)
SINCE 2013
Built with our partners.
