https://hal-ineris.archives-ouvertes.fr/ineris-00961872/document

Modelling air quality in street canyons : a review

50 years of Computational Wind Engineering: Past, present and future

Energy use in cities has attracted significant research in recent years. However such a broad topic inevitably results in number of alternative interpretations of the problem domain and the modelling tools used in its study. This paper seeks to pull together these strands by proposing a theoretical definition of an urban energy system model and then evaluating the state of current practice. Drawing on a review of 219 papers, five key areas of practice were identified – technology design, building design, urban climate, systems design, and policy assessment – each with distinct and incomplete interpretations of the problem domain. We also highlight a sixth field, land use and transportation modelling, which has direct relevance to the use of energy in cities but has been somewhat overlooked by the literature to date. Despite their diversity, these approaches to urban energy system modelling share four common challenges in understanding model complexity, data quality and uncertainty, model integration, and policy relevance. We then examine the opportunities for improving current practice in urban energy systems modelling, focusing on the potential of sensitivity analysis and cloud computing, data collection and integration techniques, and the use of activity-based modelling as an integrating framework. The results indicate that there is significant potential for urban energy systems modelling to move beyond single disciplinary approaches towards a sophisticated integrated perspective that more fully captures the theoretical intricacy of urban energy systems.

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A review of urban energy system models: Approaches, challenges and opportunities

A review of wind-driven rain research in building science

CFD Simulation of Near-Field Pollutant Dispersion in the Urban Environment: A Review of Current Modeling Techniques

Pollutant dispersion and thermal effects in urban street canyons

Eulero-Lagrangian simulation of raindrop trajectories and impacts within the urban canopy

An application of the thermo-radiative model SOLENE for the evaluation of street canyon energy balance

In order to investigate the microclimatic conditions in a street canyon, a physical model was used to conduct the Joint ATREUS-PICADA Experiment (JAPEX) in situ experimental campaign. Four lines of buildings simulated by steel containers were installed to form three parallel street canyons at 1:5 scale, with width/height aspect ratio approximately 0.40. The reference wind and atmospheric conditions were measured, as well as the flow velocity and direction in the street. Preliminary results concern street canyon ventilation and thermal effects on in-canyon airflow, and show that vortical motions appear for reference wind directions perpendicular to the street axis. The presence of adjacent rows of buildings did not appear to significantly influence the flow character within the canyon for the case of a low aspect ratio corresponding to a skimming flow regime. The flow structure was not significantly affected by the thermal effects although some slight interference occurred in the lower part of the canyon. An analysis of horizontal temperature gradients indicated that a thin boundary layer develops near the heated facade. These facts imply that the thermal effects are considerable only very close to the wall.

Micrometeorological Measurements in a Street Canyon during the Joint ATREUS-PICADA Experiment

Micrometeorological conditions in the vicinity of urban buildings strongly influence the requirements that are imposed on building heating and cooling. The goal of the present study, carried out within the Advance Tools for Rational Energy Use towards Sustainability (ATREUS) European research network, is the evaluation of the wind field around buildings with walls heated by solar radiation. Two computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes were validated against extensive wind-tunnel observations to assess the influence of thermal effects on model performance. The code selected from this validation was used to simulate the wind and temperature fields for a summer day in a specific region of the city of Lisbon. For this study, the meteorological data produced by a non-hydrostatic mesoscale atmospheric model (MM5) were used as boundary conditions for a CFD code, which was further applied to analyze the effects of local roughness elements and thermodynamic conditions on the air flow around buildings. The CFD modelling can also provide the inflow parameters for a Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system, used to evaluate the building energy budgets and to predict performance of the air-conditioning system. The main finding of the present three-dimensional analyses is that thermal forcing associated with the heating of buildings can significantly modify local properties of the air flow.

Jean-François Sini

Papers

Pollutant dispersion and thermal effects in urban street canyons

Eulero-Lagrangian simulation of raindrop trajectories and impacts within the urban canopy

An application of the thermo-radiative model SOLENE for the evaluation of street canyon energy balance

Micrometeorological Measurements in a Street Canyon during the Joint ATREUS-PICADA Experiment

Influence of Thermal Effects on the Wind Field Within the Urban Environment