From GIS to 3D flow simulations in urban environments

Urban physics is a multi-scale and interdisciplinary field, that combines science and engineering for the study of physical processes in urban areas. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is considered a powerful tool for the study of these processes. In the context of microscale phenomena these processes refer to the transfer of heat and mass in...

Estimating the roughness of muddy beds: A study based on in-site measurements and numerical modeling

Bed roughness is an important parameter for the prediction of sediment transport as well as calculating flow conditions near the bed. Numerical models are extensively used to make these predictions. In these models it is fundamental to have proper values for bed roughness. The bed roughness is being estimated using a dataset from an ongoing...

The effects of small water surfaces on turbulent flow in the atmospheric boundary layer: URANS approach implemented in OpenFOAM

A 3-D numerical method is developed to investigate the spatial distribution of surface fluxes over heterogeneous surfaces in (semi-)arid regions. Quantifying the effects of changes in the momentum, thermal and moisture roughness lengths on the airflow and fluxes in the ABL is important for water resources management and local climate studies....

Evaluation of methods for aerodynamic roughness length retrieval from very high-resolution imaging LIDAR observations over the heihe basin in China

The parameterization of heat transfer based on remote sensing data, and the Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS) scheme to retrieve turbulent heat fluxes, already proved to be very appropriate for estimating evapotranspiration (ET) over homogeneous land surfaces. However, the use of such a method over heterogeneous landscapes (e.g., semi-arid...

Estimation of Aerodynamic Roughness Length over Oasis in the Heihe River Basin by Utilizing Remote Sensing and Ground Data

Most land surface models require information on aerodynamic roughness length and its temporal and spatial variability. This research presents a practical approach for determining the aerodynamic roughness length at fine temporal and spatial resolution over the landscape by combining remote sensing and ground measurements. The basic framework of...

Multi-sensor remote sensing parameterization of heat fluxes over heterogeneous land surfaces

The parameterization of heat transfer by remote sensing, and based on SEBS scheme for turbulent heat fluxes retrieval, already proved to be very convenient for estimating evapotranspiration (ET) over homogeneous land surfaces. However, the use of such a method over heterogeneous landscapes (e.g. semi-arid regions or agricultural land) becomes...

Wavelet de-noising of terrestrial laser scanner data for the characterization of rock surface roughness

The application of terrestrial laser scanning to the study of rock surface roughness faces a major challenge: the inherent range imprecision makes the extraction of roughness parameters difficult. In practice, when roughness is in millimeter scale it is often lost in the range measurement noise. The parameters extracted from the data, therefore,...