Pathway using WUDAPT's Digital Synthetic City tool towards generating urban canopy parameters for multi-scale urban atmospheric modeling

Jason Ching, Dan Aliaga, Gerald Mills, Valery Masson, Linda See, Marina Neophytou, Ariane Middel, Alexander Baklanov, Chao Ren, Ed Ng, Jimmy Fung, Michael Wong, Yuan Huang, Alberto Martilli, Oscar Brousse, Iain Stewart, Xiaowei Zhang, Aly Shehata, Shiguang Miao, Xuemei WangWeiwen Wang, Yoshiki Yamagata, Denise Duarte, Yuguo Li, Johan Feddema, Benjamin Bechtel, Julia Hidalgo, Yelva Roustan, Young Seob Kim, Helge Simon, Tim Kropp, Michael Bruse, Fredrik Lindberg, Sue Grimmond, Matthias Demuzure, Fei Chen, Chen Li, Jorge Gonzales-Cruz, Bob Bornstein, Qiaodong He, Tzu-Ping, Adel Hanna, Evyatar Erell, Nigel Tapper, R. K. Mall, Dev Niyogi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

52 Scopus citations

Abstract

The WUDAPT (World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools project goal is to capture consistent information on urban form and function for cities worldwide that can support urban weather, climate, hydrology and air quality modeling. These data are provided as urban canopy parameters (UCPs)as used by weather, climate and air quality models to simulate the effects of urban surfaces on the overlying atmosphere. Information is stored with different levels of detail (LOD). With higher LOD greater spatial precision is provided. At the lowest LOD, Local Climate Zones (LCZ)with nominal UCP ranges is provided (order 100 m or more). To describe the spatial heterogeneity present in cities with great specificity at different urban scales we introduce the Digital Synthetic City (DSC)tool to generate UCPs at any desired scale meeting the fit-for-purpose goal of WUDAPT. 3D building and road elements of entire city landscapes are simulated based on readily available data. Comparisons with real-world urban data are very encouraging. It is customized (C-DSC)to incorporate each city's unique building morphologies based on unique types, variations and spatial distribution of building typologies, architecture features, construction materials and distribution of green and pervious surfaces. The C-DSC uses crowdsourcing methods and sampling within city Testbeds from around the world. UCP data can be computed from synthetic images at selected grid sizes and stored such that the coded string provides UCP values for individual grid cells.

Original languageEnglish
Article number100459
JournalUrban Climate
Volume28
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jun 2019

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Geography, Planning and Development
  • Environmental Science (miscellaneous)
  • Urban Studies
  • Atmospheric Science

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