Open Access
Synergistic Pathways for Sustainable Urban Energy Infrastructure: A Conceptual Integration of Geothermal Energy Geostructures, Tunnel Heat Recovery, and Self-Powered Wireless Monitoring Systems
4
Department of Civil and Environmental Energy Systems, University of Graz, Austria
Abstract
Urban energy systems are undergoing a structural transformation driven by decarbonization goals, rising cooling demand, infrastructure densification, and the need for resilient monitoring and control. The references provided for this study collectively point toward three converging technological domains: geothermal and thermo-active ground structures, heat recovery from underground and urban infrastructures, and wireless sensor systems supported by distributed energy harvesting and storage. Although these domains are often studied separately, they address a shared systems challenge: how to transform built infrastructure from a passive energy consumer into an active, monitored, and multifunctional component of sustainable urban energy networks. This article develops an original conceptual research synthesis based strictly on the supplied references. It examines the evolution of energy geostructures, geothermal tunnels, embedded-pipe heating and cooling, wastewater and underground heat recovery, and self-powered wireless sensing technologies for infrastructure intelligence. The study uses a qualitative integrative methodology to identify thematic relationships among heat extraction, thermal interaction, urban integration, storage support, and sensor-enabled operational control. The analysis finds that thermo-active foundations, piles, tunnels, and underground structures have matured from isolated engineering concepts into a broader category of embedded urban energy assets, while heat recovery from rail tunnels, cable tunnels, wastewater, and abandoned wells expands the definition of usable urban thermal resources (Brandl, 2006; Adam & Markiewicz, 2009; Davies et al., 2017; Davoodi et al., 2024). At the same time, wireless sensor networks, ambient energy harvesting, and hybrid storage systems offer a pathway for real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance, and autonomous control of these distributed thermal infrastructures (Akbari, 2014; Ma et al., 2015; Wen et al., 2021). The article argues that the future of sustainable urban energy does not lie in single-device innovation alone, but in the integration of underground thermal assets with low-power digital monitoring architectures. This integrated perspective reframes cities as layered energy environments in which structural elements, thermal flows, storage devices, and sensor intelligence operate as mutually reinforcing subsystems.
Keywords
Energy geostructures,
tunnel geothermics,
geothermal heat recovery
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