The North American Conference on Sustainability, Energy & the Environment 2014

The North American Conference on Sustainability, Energy & the Environment 2014

The North American Conference on Sustainability, Energy & the Environment 2014

There is clear evidence that Heat island has changed cities microclimate from their
original and it has led to increased overheating risk, longer summer periods and
higher energy consumption for cooling. Understanding of the relation between urban
morphology and favorable wind conditions could provide a key to avoid such serious
episodes and to improve the cities’ air quality as one the most important parameters
affecting the urban life experience. Yet optimizing permeability of urban fabric to
ensure adequate natural ventilation in urban areas is an unresolved issue faced by
planners and architects.

In this paper a method has been introduced to analyze microclimate in urban compact
patterns. Through this method are examined nine pilot samples, taken from different
compact cities around the world. The results of the analysis are patterns’ wind flow
direction, speed and temperature that are compared among selected patterns. These
kind of comparisons and analysis could be helpful not only for monitoring the
existing microclimate condition for necessary interventions, but also to evaluating
natural ventilation and wind comfort in further urban projects.

It is also proposed a user-friendly method to map the urban microclimate. The
proposal is initiated from the fact that existing simulation software are time
consuming and complex process of model preparation, simulation and results
interpretation. The method is mainly made of three steps: 1) patterns recognition, 2)
recognition of the main street canyons, 3) integration of patterns microclimate
database with the GIS tables of data to provide wind maps.

Neda Aghabegloo