LOOPSCAN · Worked example

LOOPSCAN in practice

LOOPSCAN asks the questions MELiSSA asks of a life support system: what comes in, what is recycled, what is lost, and how closed each loop is. Here it is applied to a real Dutch district, every building taken from open government data.

Choose one of four scenarios, calculated in advance with LOOPSCAN. The map, the closure per stream, the costs per party and the range of outcomes follow. The figures are illustrative orders of magnitude; a full LOOPSCAN study works with site data.

De Groote Wielen, Rosmalen (Netherlands)

How much water, heat and nutrients can a district keep in its own loop?

Exploration with illustrative figures

De Groote Wielen is a residential district of 's-Hertogenbosch, built since 2000 around a chain of lakes. The national building register lists almost 4,000 homes built before 2024 and over 900 since; the north-east extension (Noordoosthoek) will add about 2,650 more. LOOPSCAN balances water, heat, power, nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon in one model, using the evaluation approach of MELiSSA, the closed-loop life support programme of the European Space Agency.

Area

Loop technologies

Water from the district's own loop, per building

Every shape is a real building from the Dutch national building register (BAG). The dashed fields in the north-east are indicative building plots.

Loop closure per stream

Share of the need met from within the district.

Power per month

DemandSolar from the district's roofs

Where the loops meet

These links only show when water, energy and nutrients sit in one model.

Range of outcomes

Calculated over 500 combinations of investment cost, energy prices, tariffs and consumption.

Who pays and who gains

Net cost per year in euros; a minus sign is income.

Housing costs per household

Average per home per year. Investments are shown as yearly depreciation.

What a full LOOPSCAN study adds

  • Monthly balances for solar, heat demand, aquathermal storage and rainwater, under the KNMI'23 climate scenarios
  • Grid peaks against capacity, resilience to drought and outages, space needed and phasing against lock-in
  • Building data from the municipality, water board, grid operator or a digital twin; building blocks for zoning plan, heat plan and water programme

From MELiSSA to the city

  • The same questions as for a life support system: what comes in, what is recycled, what is lost, and how closed each loop is
  • MELiSSA units such as grey water treatment and nutrient recovery scored next to commercial technologies
  • Physical flows in cubic metres, megawatt hours and kilograms, not scores

What this example does not show

Every combination on this page was calculated in advance with LOOPSCAN 0.3, at today's climate and prices. The figures rest on district averages and orders of magnitude, with an accuracy of roughly plus or minus 30%. A study for your district works with site data, and the full set of assumptions is shared with the client.

LOOPSCAN © 2026 SEMiLLA IPStar. All rights reserved. LOOPSCAN is developed and owned by SEMiLLA IPStar. Illustrative exploration by SEMiLLA IPStar, the MELiSSA partner that primarily looks after commercial applications of MELiSSA technology on Earth. Not commissioned by or agreed with the municipality of 's-Hertogenbosch. All figures are orders of magnitude and must be confirmed per site. Buildings: BAG (Kadaster); water: BGT; district boundaries: CBS 2024; all via PDOK open data. North-east extension: council proposal for the zoning plan De Groote Wielen, January 2023. Primary energy factors per NTA 8800. Benchmarks: Waterschoon (Sneek) and Jenfelder Au (Hamburg).

A LOOPSCAN for your district, site or building

We run LOOPSCAN for municipalities, developers, industry and consultancies, from a first scan on open data to a study with metered consumption and site measurements.

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