Irene Peters

Professor Irene Peters, Ph.D., serves as a faculty member in the Infrastructure Planning and Urban Engineering department within the Urban Planning school at HafenCity University Hamburg. Her office is located at Henning-Voscherau-Platz 1, 20457 Hamburg, with contact number 040 42827-4571. She maintains an active research agenda focused on sustainable urban infrastructure systems and energy planning.

Her research interests center on urban energy systems, with particular emphasis on heat demand and supply modeling, renewable energy integration, and decarbonization strategies for urban environments. Professor Peters employs microsimulation techniques to analyze neighborhood-level energy dynamics and has developed spatial models for urban heat mapping. Her work bridges technical infrastructure planning with sustainable urban development goals, addressing critical challenges in energy transition for cities.

Professor Peters leads significant research initiatives including the GEWISS (Geographical Heat Information and Simulation System) project, which ran from 2014-2020 as part of the EnEff:Stadt program funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economy and Energy. This project created interactive tools for visualizing spatial heat demand and supply in Hamburg, with applications for urban energy planning.

She has supervised an extensive portfolio of student research, with documented thesis supervision from 2007 through 2024 across bachelor's, master's, and doctoral levels. Her advising spans topics including photovoltaic integration, district heating systems, urban cooling strategies, waste-to-energy systems, and sustainable building materials. Professor Peters frequently collaborates with colleagues like Prof. Schiewe on interdisciplinary research projects.

Her work integrates data science, urban modeling, and energy system analysis to address practical challenges in urban sustainability. Professor Peters' research has direct applications for municipal energy planning, particularly in the context of Germany's energy transition (Energiewende) and climate action goals.