NREL's tools for urban modeling have evolved a bit since this paper was published. The URBANopt tool that this paper described is currently being used for internal projects at NREL as well as a few select projects with external partners. The URBANopt tool is focused mostly on conceptual design of low energy districts so there is less of a need for a durable database of buildings or use of existing public data.

The concept of the CityDB as a durable database of existing buildings has been merged with the SEED Platform, https://seed-platform.org/. Urban modeling tools built on SEED will benefit from additional data flows related to energy disclosure and audit activities. NREL and LBNL are currently partnering with the City of San Francisco to work on a DOE project (BRICR) using this architecture. Both URBANopt and BRICR leverage new additions to the OpenStudio-Standards gem for generating prototypical models from limited data.

Please send me an email at daniel (dot) macumber (at) nrel.gov if you are interested more details.