Urban air temperature and wind speed variability: Empirical modeling to improve planning applications

ended

Climate change induces warmer summers and more frequent and intense heat waves, increasing human mortality and energy demand for cooling purpose. This is particularly critical in urban areas where climate variables such as temperature, humidity, wind and radiation are modified by the urban morphology, the lack of pervious soils and the human activities. While the urban population is likely to grow, it is urgent to make cities cooler. The overall goal of my project is to determine the urban fabric characteristics (mainly the morphology, vegetation cover and land-type) affecting the air temperature and the wind speed spatial variability. This new knowledge will be integrated in the Geographical Information System software QGIS in order to make it easily available to researchers working with urban issues as well as urban planners. First, empirical models will be developed to relate observed air temperature and simulated wind speed values to geographical indicators characterizing an observed or a simulated location (e.g. distance to building facade, vegetation or building density, etc.). Second, these models will be integrated in the QGIS software and thus will be available for interdisciplinary research purposes. Third, I will investigate the coupling of the urban climate models with energy models devoted to building energy estimation or solar energy production which are developed by the University Savoie Mont-Blanc (USMB - partner organization). The models developed during Urb-TWin will be useful for the urban climate research community since they could be used to speed up CFD simulations used in urban climate models. Moreover, they will also be available for urban planning applications from the widely known QGIS plat-form. Last, thanks to the Urb-TWin training and secondment, I will also increase my probability to get a permanent position as leader of an urban climate research axis at the partner organisation in the next years.