Investigating the Relative Importance of Spatial and Environmental Factors on Energy Consumption in the Residential Sectors Using GIS (Case Study: Kerman)

A large number of factors affect the energy consumption of a building. These factors can be categorized into building-related and space-related factors. The purpose of this study was to use the geospatial information system (GIS) to estimate and analyze the relative importance of factors within either group to model the gas and electricity consumption of several randomly selected residential buildings in the city of Kerman, Iran. The considered building-related factors were age, area, and price of the building, and the space-related factors were elevation, vegetation cover, and land surface temperature. The results showed that the area, elevation, and vegetation cover were the most important factors for gas consumption, while the age of the building and the land surface temperature affected the electricity consumption more than others.