Recent Trends and Remaining Limitations in Urban Microclimate Models
Manmeet Singh, Debra F. Laefer*Landscape, and Civil Engineering University, College Dublin Phillips Building, School of Architecture, Room G25 Belfield Dublin 4, Ireland
Abstract
Problems such as natural ventilation, pollutant dispersion, changes in wind environments, and urban heat islands
are gaining increasing prominence in both public concern and research. In response, urban microclimate modelling
researchers are continually striving to develop new strategies to rapidly and inexpensively generate more accurate results.
Numerical modelling is a common way to address these concerns. However, to generate realistic results requires significant
investment in model creation, especially with respect to the detail to which a model is populated. This paper provides
an overview about this and other recent trends within the research community by considering nearly 100 recent papers.
Findings show that despite more computational capacity there has not been a major trend towards increasing the model
complexity to obtain more realistic results.
Keywords: Air quality, comprehensive turbulent aerosol dynamics and gas chemistry, computational fluid dynamics, environmental justice, microclimate, perceptual fidelity, urban heat island, wind environment.
Article Information
Article History:
Received Date: 18/3/2014
Revision Received Date: 22/4/2014
Acceptance Date: 28/4/2014
Electronic publication date: 22/1/2015
Collection year: 2015
© Singh and Laefer; Licensee Bentham Open.
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
* Address correspondence to this author at the Landscape, and Civil Engineering
University, College Dublin Phillips Building, School of Architecture,
Room G25 Belfield Dublin 4, Ireland; Tel: 353-1-716-3226;
E-mail: debra.laefer@ucd.ie
Open Peer Review Details |
Manuscript submitted on 18-3-2014 |
Original Manuscript |
Recent Trends and Remaining Limitations in Urban Microclimate Models |