Research project launched: Open data infrastructure for municipal heat planning

2. February 2026 | Launch of the project for open data infrastructure for municipal heat planning results: The partners from the Reiner Lemoine Institute and the University of Osnabrück met in Berlin on Monday, February 2nd 2026 to kick off the project. What they will be working on over the next two years:

The project:
The Heat Planning Act requires municipalities to carry out comprehensive heat planning. This is precisely where the newly launched research project comes in: Using databases and knowledge graphs, the scientists want to make the results of the KWP comparable and usable. The project is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

The goal:
The research partners are developing an open, standardized data infrastructure. With the help of a central database system, the KWP data will be structured, harmonized, and made openly accessible. This will make the results comparable, reusable in the long term, and evaluable across regions. This will help science, administration, and practice alike.

The methods:
The project team uses the interoperable and OpenEnergyOntology-compliant KWP ontology and the Open Energy Knowledge Graph to formalize and link the data. The database is populated via standardized interfaces, user-friendly input masks, and AI-supported processes for extracting information from existing documents. The publication of the data is consistently based on the FAIR principles, i.e., findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, and the principles of open science.

Ludwig Hülk, researcher in the research unit Transformation of Energy Systems, leads the project for RLI.

More information about the project is available on the project page.

Photo: The project consortium: From left to right:
Jonas Huber (RLI), Norman Zielke (RLI), Prof. Dr. Till Mossakowski (UOS), Mirjam Stappel (UOS), Mascha Richter (RLI), Ludwig Hülk (RLI)