Study of the urban heat island in Lecce (Italy) by means of ADMS and ENVI-MET

Abstract

The Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon is associated to a cascade of effects on citizens' health, energy consumptions and air quality. Accurate local scale UHI numerical predictions are particularly relevant for the achievement of a sustainable urban planning. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of two different modelling techniques to predict temperature distribution within the urban environment. The diagnostic integral-semi-Gaussian model ADMS-Temperature and Humidity Model and the prognostic Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based model ENVI-met were used and results were validated against field measurements collected during summer 2012 in four different neighbourhoods of Lecce, an Italian medium size city. Results suggested that even if the entire building morphometry and green areas were carefully reproduced within the CFD-based model and only parameterized within the integral model, the level of complications appeared to be not essential in temperature predictions. As a consequence the integral model resulted to be more effective for a fast and accurate assessment of air temperature distribution within the city.

Spatial Analysis of the Development Potential of a Commercial District: A Case of Hong Kong

“…of the limitations the simulation results may not be accurate enough for absolute quantification, they are sufficiently accurate for studying relative differences. Furthermore, although ENVI-met may not be capable of deriving rigorous quantitative results at a specific time, it can nevertheless accurately depict the trend of changes (Maggiotto et al, 2014).…”

Chasing Comfort in the Chill: Simulating the Impact of Opened Streamlines on Microclimatic Conditions, Thermal Comfort and Building Facades in Cold Climate Cities

“…ENVI-met was chosen for this investigation because of its ease of use and dependability in measuring urban microclimatic changes such as thermal comfort (PMV) and mean radiation temperature (TMRT). ENVI-met has been rigorously tested for evaluating urban design solutions in outdoor thermal settings [47][48][49][50][51][52]. It outperforms other methods for predicting urban microclimate conditions as the best model for assessing human comfort at street level.…”

Characterization of Urban Greening in a District of Lecce (Southern Italy) for the Analysis of CO2 Storage and Air Pollutant Dispersion

“…As for microclimate, only few studies, both experimental and modeling, were performed. Maggiotto et al [50,51] discussed the performance of the temperature perturbation-type Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling System (ADMS)-Temperature and Humidity Model (ADMS-TH) and ENVI-met for the prediction of urban air temperature using field measurements they collected in the summer of 2012. Direct comparisons with measured data and statistical indices showed that modeled results were within the range of acceptance.…”

“…ENVI-met was successfully employed in studies analyzing the effects of vegetation on microclimate and thermal comfort in the urban environment, where it was thoroughly described [34][35][36][37][38][39][40]; it was also employed for an investigation of air quality, focusing on air pollutant deposition and dispersion in several studies [41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49], which mostly found a satisfactory agreement with observations and concluded that, although it is not a very sophisticated model, it provides sufficient functions for establishing small-scale pollutant distribution for studies of urban greening in near-road environments. Specifically, the model was only applied to evaluate the microclimate in some districts of Lecce [50][51][52], while, to our knowledge, there are no papers applying the model to evaluate the impact of urban greening on the dispersion of air pollutants in the city of Lecce.…”