The impact of level of detail in 3d city models for cfd-based wind flow simulations

Journal Article (2021)
Author(s)

Clara García-Sánchez (TU Delft - Urban Data Science)

S. Vitalis (TU Delft - Urban Data Science)

Ivan Pađen (TU Delft - Urban Data Science)

J. Stoter (TU Delft - Urban Data Science)

Research Group
Urban Data Science
Copyright
© 2021 C. Garcia Sanchez, S. Vitalis, I. Pađen, J.E. Stoter
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVI-4-W4-2021-67-2021
More Info
expand_more
Publication Year
2021
Language
English
Copyright
© 2021 C. Garcia Sanchez, S. Vitalis, I. Pađen, J.E. Stoter
Research Group
Urban Data Science
Issue number
4/W4-2021
Volume number
46
Pages (from-to)
67-72
Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Abstract

Climate change and urbanization rates are transforming urban environments, making the use of 3D city models in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) a fundamental ingredient to evaluate urban layouts before construction. However, current geometries used in CFD simulations tend to be built by CFD experts to test specific cases, most of the times oversimplifying their designs due to lack of information or in order to reduce complexity. In this work we explore what are the effects of oversimplifying geometries by comparing wind simulations of different level of detail geometries. We use semantic 3D city models automatically built and adjust them to their suitable use in CFD. For the first test, we explore wind simulations within a troublesome section of the TUDelft campus, the passage next to the EWI building (the tallest building in our domain), where the use of 3D city model variants show how differences in geometry and surface properties affect local wind conditions. Finally we analyze what these differences in velocity magnitude could mean for practitioners in terms of pedestrian wind comfort.