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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9034</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-archives-L-4-W3-2026-107-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Automated geometric decomposition and semantic enrichment of shared wall boundary surfaces in LoD 2 CityGML models for urban building energy modelling</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Morales</surname>
<given-names>Richard Dean</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>León-Sánchez</surname>
<given-names>Camilo</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Agugiaro</surname>
<given-names>Giorgio</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2611-4650</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Audenaert</surname>
<given-names>Amaryllis</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Verbeke</surname>
<given-names>Stijn</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Energy and Materials in Infrastructure and Buildings (EMIB), University of Antwerp, Groenenborgerlaan 171, 2020 Antwerp, Belgium</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Laboratory of Geo-information Science and Remote Sensing, Wageningen University &amp; Research, Gelderland, Wageningen, 6700 AA, The Netherlands</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>3D Geoinformation Group, Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, 2628 BL Delft, The Netherlands</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), Boeretang 200, 2400 Mol, Belgium</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>EnergyVille, Thor Park 8310, 3600 Genk, Belgium</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>29</day>
<month>09</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>L-4/W3-2026</volume>
<fpage>107</fpage>
<lpage>114</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Richard Dean Morales et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/L-4-W3-2026/107/2026/isprs-archives-L-4-W3-2026-107-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/L-4-W3-2026/107/2026/isprs-archives-L-4-W3-2026-107-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/L-4-W3-2026/107/2026/isprs-archives-L-4-W3-2026-107-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/L-4-W3-2026/107/2026/isprs-archives-L-4-W3-2026-107-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Urban Building Energy Modelling (UBEM) can be adapted to assess thermal comfort and climate resilience in dense urban cities. However, common modelling and simulation practices treat shared wall boundaries between adjacent buildings as adiabatic, de facto ignoring inter-building heat transfer, which can lead to deviations in energy and temperature simulations. To resolve this challenge, an automated framework is developed that identifies, geometrically decomposes, and semantically enriches shared wall boundaries within complex Level-of-Detail (LoD) 2 CityGML models. Application of the framework to a 1,429-building dataset in Antwerp, Belgium, successfully identified and decomposed 6,667 shared wall surfaces, maintaining topological validity for 1,404 of the 1,425 (98.53%) originally valid buildings prior to any external healing. For comparative analysis, both the original and the geometrically decomposed CityGML models were processed through a computational pipeline to generate simulation-ready epJSON files for EnergyPlus. This translation highlights a fundamental friction between the inherent geometric imperfections of sourced real-world, surveyed geospatial data in CityGML and the idealized geometries expected by EnergyPlus. Comparative urban simulations confirm that the modelling of explicit shared surface heat transfer, compared to adiabatic assumption, yields systematically higher heating demand projection (mean bias error (MBE) = +23.67 kWh/m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;, mean absolute error (MAE) = 24.14 kWh/m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;, root mean square deviation (RMSD) = 31.99 kWh/m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;) and lower indoor operative temperatures (MBE = &amp;minus;0.216&amp;thinsp;&amp;deg;C, MAE = 0.235&amp;thinsp;&amp;deg;C, RMSD = 0.366&amp;thinsp;&amp;deg;C). These findings emphasize the necessity of explicit shared-boundary modelling for accurate, actionable district-level energy and indoor thermal comfort assessments.</p>
</abstract>
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