DRAFT close to final submission

Coupling real-time 3D landscape models with

microclimate simulations
Lewis Gill, Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
E. Abigail Hathway, Department of Civil and Structural Engineering,
University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
Eckart Lange, Department of Landscape, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
Ed Morgan, Department of Landscape, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
Daniela Romano, Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, United
Kingdom

ABSTRACT
With urban design, it is becoming increasingly important to both visualise spatial changes and
quantify the effect of these changes on the local microclimate: the former often for public
consultation and the latter to develop landscapes that provide resilience to warmer weather
thus reducing the urban heat island effect. It is possible to automatically construct 3D
landscape models from vector site plans and height data sources through procedural
generation. However, the generation of the inputs for microclimate models remains a time
consuming process even though 3D visualisations or site plans may already exist.
In this paper, a method to link procedurally generated 3D landscape models to microclimate
simulations is demonstrated. Using this method, a case study is presented that allows initial
calibration of the model and then several distinct alterations in the base design are tested
alongside the variation in weather conditions looking forward to 2080.
Finally, graphics card shaders are used to incorporate the temperature data within the
interactive 3D procedural models, allowing both real-time manipulation of view point and
simulation time.
Keywords: microclimate, procedural generation, 3D, interactive, Envi-met, climate change,
Urban Heat Island, landscape visualization

INTRODUCTION
Increasing urbanisation and the changing climate mean that consideration of the
Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and methods to mitigate it are becoming a key concern
in urban planning. Within planning frameworks, it is becoming accepted that adaption
and resilience to climate change must be provided rather than simple focus on
mitigation (S. E. Gill, Handley, Ennos, & Pauleit, 2007). The prospect of a warmer
climate and more intense heat waves presents a particular concern to urban habitats
where air temperatures can be significantly higher than surrounding rural areas. For

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instance London, UK has been measured to have a nocturnal heat island of nearly 9C
in urban areas during clear sky periods (Kolokotroni & Giridharan, 2008). Such heating
creates both uncomfortable night time temperatures, but also reduces the cooling of
the urban fabric. The European heat waves of 2003 showed the devastating effect of
increased air temperatures on the mortality of elderly people, particularly in urban
areas, and risk analysis has shown a direct correlation between risk of death and the
availability of local vegetation (Vandentorren et al., 2006). It is unsurprising, therefore,
that there is an interest in the mitigation of the UHI. General rules for mitigation
generated from the literature include: increased amount of green space, design of
street canyons to increase the sky view factor and presence of natural porous
surfaces to improve local evaporation. For example, Keeble, Collins, & Ryser (1991)
state that landscape design can have a significant impact on the microclimate of a
built-up area with the solar access and wind protection being critical to the
effectiveness of the design. Smith & Levermore (2008) provide a substantial review of
the issue and methods appropriate for mitigation in the UK. However, the process of
the local microclimate is a complex one and large scale changes to site design may be
difficult to quantify for their impact on the local climate. The interrelation between
sensible heat exchange, evaporation and evapotranspiration, the absorption of solar
radiation (which changes due to diurnal variations in shading and fluctuating wind
speeds) mean that it can be beneficial to use numerical models to assess the impact of
design changes instead of simple rules of thumb.
Regarding the landscape planning process, rather than proposals being imposed topdown, there is an increasing trend to shift decision making to be more inclusive (Lange
& Hehl-Lange, 2011). To this end, visualisations of future landscapes are increasingly
common as a method of communication of designs to both technical and nontechnical participants of the landscape design and planning process. These range from
two dimensional (2D) plans and photo-montages, through physical models to fully
interactive three dimensional (3D) computer visualisations (L. Gill & Lange, 2012).
However, 3D visualisations tend to remain focused on the spatial and visual nature of
change, rather than the performance of the proposed landscape, such as UHI
mitigation efficacy. Zlatanova, Itard, Kibria, & van Dorst (2010) assert that although
design professionals are confident with plans, the same professionals doubt if the
public is as au fait with maps and plans as they are. Therefore, considering that
microclimate results often come in the form of 2D plans or sections, public
consultation techniques should be adapted to consider this mismatch.
So, consider a landscape proposal drawn as a 2D master plan that will require both an
interactive 3D model for public participation purposes and a microclimate numeric
simulation to consider UHI resilience. Both the inputs to microclimate numeric
modelling and interactive 3D models can require large amounts of time to construct
and tend to be undertaken as a manual process, which can lead to inherent problems.
Procedures such as these can be error prone, due to inaccurate translation of a 2D
design plan into another system. If both a microclimate simulation and a 3D model of
a proposal are to be constructed, it becomes a duplication of effort to create both the
inputs to the microclimate modelling and the 3D visualisation. Design data becomes

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distributed in three places (2D plans, 3D model and microclimate simulation) and, as
the designs evolve, keeping everything synchronized becomes increasingly difficult.
To avoid this situation, it would be advantageous to automatically link changes to the
2D plans for a design through to both a 3D model and to a microclimate model. The
synchronised procedure can also produce a secondary benefit in that the microclimate
simulation results can be integrated back into the context of the 3D model to present
the results in a spatially relevant manner. Thus, this paper presents a methodology for
tightly coupling 2D plans to 3D microclimate modelling and visualising those results
interactively in 3D.

RELATED WORK
At the scale of regeneration projects, it is useful to consider the urban microclimate
using a numerical approach. Computational Fluid Dynamics has traditionally been
used to study urban micro- climatic conditions. Examples include the wind dynamics
around urban blocks, to evaluate pedestrian safety due to wind speeds (Blocken,
Janssen, & van Hooff, 2012). Thermal aspects are often incorporated through the use
of additional methods such defining surface temperatures from field data
(Priyadarsini, Hien, & Cheong Kok Wai, 2008), or alternatively evaluating the radiative
components in the heat balance equation through the use of separate linked radiation
models (Robitu, Musy, Inard, & Groleau, 2006). The Envi-met tool (Bruse & Fleer, 1998)
described later has been developed specifically to study urban microclimates and
incorporates a range of relevant parameters.
Regarding interactive 3D landscape visualisations, Sheppard (2005) provides a
summary of existing work and provides a strong basis for the need for using landscape
visualisations to visualise climate change. He summarises developments in this area
and develops a theory around the capacity of the visualisations to influence people.
Most of this reported work attempts to demonstrate the visual effects of climate
change on landscapes in a realistic fashion, but certain quantities of interest, such as
temperature, are invisible to the viewer. Thus, there have been attempts to visualise
non-visible data spatially by overlaying or false colouring data in the context of a 3D
model. Hehl-Lange (2001) overlaid ecological data on to a 3D landscape model.
Satellite sourced temperature data was placed in context with a 3D model by Nichol &
Wong (2005). Asawa, Hoyano, & Nakaohkubo (2008) presented a software tool that
takes a 3D CAD model and applies a heat balance simulation to examine surface
temperature distribution. This tool allows generic input and linked visualisation, but
this base model still has to be manually created within the CAD system.
Eastman (1976) proposed Building Information Models (BIM). A BIM is a single
repository of data about a building and aims not only to inform the design stage, but to
support the entire life cycle of a building. A BIM contains design geometry combined
with attributes, and the supporting software exposes this design data through generic
interfaces to enable different analytical programs to integrate the design. The
adoption of BIM into industry has been slow, but there are now mainstream products
that can be used. Ervin (2006) has suggested a similar approach is taken to landscape

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design in the form of Landscape Information Models (LIM). The idea being that there
would be one central model for a landscape proposal that could be used for
visualisation, analysis and simulations. These LIMs are yet to emerge. However, in a
warming world the incorporation of microclimate simulation into LIMs will be
essential. This paper examines the possibilities and advantages of connecting these
two fields of research together.

METHODOLOGY
Rather than creating disparate models, there are advantages in combining visual
models with microclimate simulations as illustrated in Figure 1. A 3D model of an area
can be created through procedural generation from parameterised 2D plans. By
directly constructing this 3D model of the area and combining it with information from
the 2D plans, it is subsequently possible to automate the creation of the required input
file for microclimate modelling. Finally, after results have been generated from the
microclimate simulations, it is possible to display the results within the context of the
3D spatial model. This allows the designer to consider further targeted changes to the
2D plans to improve UHI resilience.

Figure 1. Methodology of linking 3D spatial modelling with microclimate modelling

This methodology leads to a removal of any human error in translation of a proposal
into two distinct systems, potentially by different people. It also increases the speed
that alteration to plans can be analysed for microclimate performance. Errors could
still be introduced to the system through erroneous procedural modelling. However,
given there is an interactive 3D model produced as part of the process, there is an
opportunity to visualise the results of the procedural generation before exporting to
the microclimate simulation. This would help guard against problems with the
parameterised base plans or procedural modelling errors. For those who find it hard
to interpret plans (Zlatanova et al., 2010), displaying the results within the 3D model
may lead to easier cognitive understanding of those results.

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Each section below will expand on the steps taken to construct this system: Envi-met
modelling; automating the construction of a 3D model; creation of input data to Envimet simulation; and visualisation of Envi-met results in the 3D model.

Envi-met microclimate modelling

The Envi-met model used in this study is a freeware numerical method that
incorporates the interaction between atmosphere, soil system and vegetation in a
single simulation tool. Sensible and latent heat transfer, radiation and air flow are all
included in the analysis (Bruse & Fleer, 1998). With a resolution of 0.5 to 1m in space
and 10s in time, Envi-met is used to study alterations to urban form in a variety of
climates. Due to its ability to incorporate the latent heat transfer between vegetation
and the atmosphere it has been used by several authors to interrogate the impact of
greening in urban areas. For instance Ng, Chen, Wang, & Yuan (2012) used the tool to
carry out parametric analysis on percentage of land coverage with buildings and
vegetation. The impacts of large parks (Chow, Pope, Martin, & Brazel, 2011), building
heights (Kakon & Mishima, 2009) and specific types of vegetation (Chow & Brazel,
2012) on local air temperature have been studied. Furthermore, it has been
implemented in the analysis of master plans highlighting the benefits of trees at
pedestrian level over the use of grass, or greening of rooftops (Hien & Jusuf, 2008).
This gives a clear indication that greening alone does not necessarily mitigate the UHI
and underlines the importance of implementing a model such as Envi-met to
determine the outcome of a site design on local air temperature and thermal comfort.
The model allows the generation of outputs at any time of the day for values of
temperature, humidity, solar radiation, and a range of other variables at any point in
the domain. This means patterns of cooling, identification of cooler and warmer areas
can be carried out, although for decision making it is necessary to draw out a small
part of the large amount of data available. For this purpose, Envi-met comes with a
visualisation tool, Leonardo, which allows users to view simulation results in 2D and
3D, but it requires knowledge of Envi-met to operate and does not display results
interactively in real-time. Thus, it does not lend itself to operation by non-technical
users.
As with any simulation there are many ways in which the accuracy of the solution may
be reduced. Blocken and Gualtieri (2012) provide a comprehensive description of best
practice in modelling environmental fluid flows to aid in the production of credible
models. Within the case study presented later in this paper, many of the parameters
used are taken from the defaults provided within Envi-met, enabling the evaluation of
a semi-automated process for building the model using limited knowledge of specialist
site characteristics. The validity of the results generated is shown through comparison
to measured data. In line with best practice the dependency of the solution on the
size of computational grid is also investigated.
Envi-met version 3.1 BETA 5 was used for all the modelling and this version is available
from www.envi-met.net. This modelling system was also suitable because the input

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file formats were described in detail, allowing the linkage to a 3D model to be
developed.

Automating the construction of a 3d model

Procedural generation is the automated construction of a 3D model from a set of
inputs and a set of construction rules. It has been shown to be capable of producing
detailed 3D architectural building models (Wonka, Wimmer, Sillion, & Ribarsky, 2003)
to city wide models (Parish & Muller, 2001). Construction of a 3D model of an area
from a 2D plan has been shown to be possible (Ross, Kleinschmit, Dllner, & Buchholz,
2006) and Laycock, Ryder and Day (2007) demonstrated that it is possible to combine
procedural generation with remote sensing data to generate a 3D model.
A parametric procedural generation system has been created to take a 2D vector plan,
held in Trimble Sketchup, and construct a simple 3D model of that plan based on a set
of parameters held against each region in the 2D plan, as shown on the left in Figure 2.
Each region in the 2D plan can hold a land usage parameter, such as Building, Road
or River, and a set of zero or more sub-parameters specific to the land usage type.
So, a region marked as a building would have sub-parameters, such as Height and
Has Green Roof. These parameters and the region boundary define the requisite
input data the procedural generator needs in order to construct the appropriate 3D
representation.

Figure 2. (left) 2D parametric plan in Google Sketchup, (right) procedurally generated

model in Simmetry 3d
An importer for United Kingdom Ordnance Survey mapping data has been developed,
so that any area in the UK can be imported into the system. This importation process
converts Ordnance Survey Mastermap GML polygon data into Trimble Sketchup as
coloured regions. It also takes the mapping attributes and converts them into the
correct parameters for the parametric system to use.
The regions in the 2D plan can be subsequently altered using a combination of Trimble
Sketchup line drawing tools and a custom parametric plug in, allowing the Land
Usage of regions in the plan to be re-categorised and re-tagged with any valid
parameters for the procedural generation system. Large vegetation, such as trees, can
be entered manually as 2D shapes on top of the 2D plan in Sketchup, or can be
imported en masse from standard point based GIS data layers into Sketchup. The

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finalised and tagged 2D plan is converted into an intermediate file format, which is
then loaded into a 3D host program, the interactive landscape visualisation software
Simmetry 3d.
A second plug in that is loaded into Simmetry 3d takes this intermediate format and
converts the plan into a 3D model, as shown in the right side of Figure 2. Each region
in the 2D plan is converted to a separate element in the 3D model. Next, the 2D tree
positions are converted to a set of tagged 3D tree models in the 3D model. Once the
import process is complete, the user of Simmetry 3d can interactively view the 3D
model in real-time. Any design changes to the 2D plan can be taken through the same
process and further 3D models can be created.
The procedural generation system is capable of referencing Light Detection and
Ranging (LIDAR) data held within Simmetry 3d to produce a 3D model with terrain.
However, as Envi-met version 3 only uses a flat plane, it was decided not to use LIDAR
in this case, simplifying the Envi-met data file generation process.

Creation of input data to Envi-met simulation

Envi-met requires two files to run a simulation; an area description file and a
configuration file. The configuration file contains all the parameters for running a
simulation, such as total time to run and initial weather conditions. As this format
does not include spatial information, a single file can be created and reused for a range
of different site designs at the same location.
The input file is composed of several grids detailing the building heights, soil and
vegetation states. These have to be input by hand and for the case of multiple
proposals this can be a time consuming process, especially as the grid size increases. In
the case study detailed later, the grids generated are 93 x 93, which means 8,649 cells
per layer for each scenario to be categorised. As Envi-met can run grid sizes up to 250
x 250 (62,500 cells), this task can soon become laborious.
Instead of creating the input files by hand, the generated 3D model was used as a
reference to construct the Envi-met input file automatically, thereby making it much
easier to create multiple input files. To achieve this, the parametric construction of
the 3D model was utilised to tag all individual elements of the 3D with appropriate key
/ value pairs, such as land usage = building. At the least, each element is tagged with
a land usage, but some objects would require further tagging, such as Building
Height=10m for a building element in the model.
The creation of Envi-met input files is the rasterization of the vector plan into a set of
grids containing the data needed by the Envi-met simulation. As Graphics Processing
Unit (GPU) of a computer is a highly effective rasterizer, so it was deemed suitable to
perform the conversion process directly on the 3D model. Currently, Envi-met requires
only the input data at the surface, so it would be possible to create the input files
directly from the vector plan, but the upcoming Envi-met version 4 will accept a 3D
volume of input data. By rendering slices of the 3D model at fixed height intervals, this

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method would also provide the possibility of converting a 3D model into a volume of
input data
To perform the rasterization, a rendering function available in the Simmetry 3d
visualisation software API allows the 3D model to be falsely coloured based on an
element tag and the possible values in that tag. The rendering function takes a
mapping of tag values to colours. Using this mapping, the false colour render pass
reduces the 3D model into a resultant coloured grid, which can be interrogated using
the reverse colour to value mapping. The renderer function is flexible and can produce
any resolution of grid required for entire modelled area, or a subset of this area
depending on the user requirements.
For the Envi-met export, this process is repeated four times on four different element
tags to construct the following layers: Land Usage; Height Data; Green Roofs and
Building Base Heights. The data in these four grid layers are then composited together
into the required Envi-met input file. The land usage provides information on soil, or
surface type and vegetation. A series of standard ground profiles were used including
sandy soil, tarmac and concrete pavements and the tags developed to reference an
individual profile. The moisture content of the soil can be adapted within Envi-met,
however for this study only the default is used. For design comparisons, detailed
knowledge of soil moisture levels will not be known and the purpose of this study is to
demonstrate the use of the method for early planning design comparisons and
decision making. Three standard tree types were used with processes (e.g. stomata
resistance) kept at default and the leaf area density based on the work of Fahmy
(2010). The projection of vector data on to a low resolution raster grid can mean that
not all trees present in the vector 2D plan can be captured and imported into the
microclimate simulation. However this simplification is tested in the validation
section. The process is being developed to test and compare early stage designs,
hence exact number and location of trees will not be known. Furthermore, exact
information on trees would only represent one point in their life span, whereas when
they mature their moisture uptake and microclimate impact will alter.
As this export process is performed by the GPU, the process is completed in the four
rendering passes of the model and the set up time on the main processor for the type
of categorisation to render. This makes it a cheap operation in terms of time to
complete. However, this speed advantage is reduced by the long periods that
microclimate models currently take to run. This slow down could be addressed by GPU
processing, see the Discussion and Future Work section for further comment on this
point.

Visualisation of simulation results

Having generated the results from Envi-met, a technique for importing these results
back into the 3D model was developed. This was done so that it was possible to
display the results of the microclimate simulation within the context of the 3D model.
Hence, areas in the 3D model would be falsely coloured with a more intense red value
directly corresponding to the temperature from the microclimate simulation results.

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Although Envi-met has the capability to provide 3D results of air temperature and
other parameters only surface temperatures were used for this initial demonstration.
This overlay was achieved by creating graphics card shaders, which allow
programmatic control over 3D model element shapes (vertex shader) and pixel colour
(fragment shader) of the final image displayed to the user via small programs resident
on the GPU.
The implemented shaders provide for real-time manipulation of the simulation time of
the microclimate results. Combining interactive simulation visualisation with the
interactive view position provided by the 3D visualisation allows the viewer to control
and view the data in a very flexible manner. In addition to this display of a single
result, a second differential graphic shader program was developed that highlighted
the areas of the model that were predicted to be cooler or hotter compared to a
reference simulation parameter. These two parameters were made configurable in
real-time for the user to switch between displaying different simulation runs.
The procedure for importing the results began with a manual extraction from the Envimet result sets of hourly surface temperatures for the 48 hours of simulation.
Although the model generates a variety of outputs, such as air temperature, humidity,
surface temperature, wind speed, only surface temperatures have been used in this
instance. For each simulation, this step was repeated 48 times. Once the extraction
was complete, an automated procedure converted the raw grid based data into image
files that could be used with the graphics shader. This involved a two pass process.
Firstly, all the results were read to discover the maximum and minimum temperatures
across all simulations. Secondly, all the hourly results were then encoded into an RGB
scheme, using normalised values in the red component.
Once the image files were prepared a final automated import process was performed
to create 3D textures on the graphics card that could be referenced by the shader.
Each hourly result from a simulation run was placed into a separate layer of a 3D
texture. It was then possible to interrogate the 3D texture from within the shader
using a time parameter in the range of 0 to 1 that allowed access to hardware
interpolated results from the 3D texture. Regarding the implementation of the
graphics shaders, the vertex program was a simple pass-through program that did not
alter the 3D model and all the processing was done in a fragment shader with the 3D
texture look ups providing colour values to overlay the model. Building walls were
excluded from the colouring process using their normal value, so the 3D model context
could still be perceived. A tolerance value could also be set which would only false
colour over a certain percentage of the overall temperatures, meaning the user would
see only the hottest percentage areas. In addition to this, the user could blend in and
out the false colouring with the model colour using an alpha blend value in the
fragment shader.
Control of the simulation time by the user was implemented through a slider control in
the user interface that updated a uniform time variable in the graphics shaders. This
slider allows the user to move back and forth in real-time through the 48 hours of

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simulation time. However, it was also possible to create an animation of the results
simply by automating the increment of this time variable.

RESULTS
A case study of an area of Sheffield, UK was used to develop the methodology. The
area selected was 800m2 and contained a river within an urban setting. Ordnance
Survey mapping data was used to define the current situation and from this an
alternative design to provide more resilience to UHI effects was produced. The
alternative design is based on a typical street layout, generally consisting of hard urban
materials but incorporating approximately 1.5% increase in the number of street trees
aligning the main roads and in the new river side square. Buildings remain low, at a
maximum of six storeys, and are stepped down to open areas and the river side to
prevent high wind speeds.
This section breaks the results down into four sections. Firstly, the results of the
model validation are given. Secondly, the predicted effects of climate change are
detailed on the current and alternative design for years 2050 and 2080. Thirdly, the
results of altering the grid size in the simulations are discussed. Finally, the findings
from the interactive visualisation of the results are given.

Model Validation
The model is to be used to assess the effect of different urban forms on the urban
climate under climate change impacts. The main concern is the overheating of cities
and the performance of the urban infrastructure during extreme heating events.
Therefore, it was chosen to validate the model against the hottest period available
from field monitoring data based on a year long monitoring campaign around the river
Don in Sheffield. Measurements of temperature (iButtons, Maxim, USA) were taken
every 20 minutes at a selection of points across the site as indicated in Figure 3.
Measurement point RS used a weather station (Skye instruments, UK) to monitor wind
speed and direction directly adjacent to the river as well as temperature and humidity.
The period of May 20th May 24th was chosen for the analysis as this was a dry period
with consistently clear sky days and temperatures reaching over 27C.

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Figure 3. Locations of measurement points (X) for model validation. Monitors FT

(Footbridge) and RS (Riverside) are used to evaluate the individual point
measurements, all marked measurement points are used to calculate the average.
(North aligned, not to scale). Crown Copyright/Digimap 2012
Simulations were carried out for May 23rd 2010 04:00 to May 24th 2012 20:00 and
initial conditions are shown in Table 1. Soil moisture content was treated as default
and the urban surfaces were only treated as soil, asphalt or concrete, with vegetation
of either grass or trees. Comparisons were carried out between specific points on the
site; next to the river (RS); over the centre of the river (FT) and 60m from the river
bank (60m). These results are shown top and bottom in Figure 4. The simulated
results of air temperature are exported every two hours at a height of 2m. The chart
shows good comparison for the measurements on the river bank, but the simulation
over the centre of the river is 2 degrees higher than the measurements on the 24th.
However, it is similar to the average measurements for that period. This is unsurprising
since the water is modelled as still water and not as a flowing river. In reality, the river
water in Sheffield originates in the Pennines and Sheffield is the first urban area it
passes through. Therefore, it is unlikely to have suffered from urban heating and may
well be cooler than the simulation. Good comparison is also shown approximately
60m from the river side shown in Figure 5.
Figure 6 shows the comparison of the average of six monitors in the centre of the site
with the average temperature for the entire site from the simulation. The results show

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good comparisons for the 24th May, after the model has been running for over 24
hours. These results seem consistent with the weather conditions on the site for the
previous 4 days when the conditions were relatively consistent. However, on the 23rd
the model heavily underestimates the maximum temperature. As a numerical model,
Envi-met does require at least 6 hours to stabilise, therefore the results before 10am
on the 23rd should be ignored. Even so, the results on day one in the afternoon are still
low in the simulation. In comparison to the other days this was an atypical day due to
the very high temperatures reached. Furthermore, there had been a number of
substantially warm days beforehand and the model may require significantly more
initialisation time due to these conditions. It has been noted by other authors that the
model fails to reach the highest temperatures measured (W. Chow et al., 2011; Ng et
al., 2012) by as much as 6C (Jansson, 2006, p. 24). Overall, considering the results
shown here, the model is suitable for evaluating changes to the site layout and level of
greening. However, it should be noted that it may under estimate the maximum
temperatures that may occur.

Figure 4 - Variation in temperature over day 2 of the simulation compared to simulated

data for the 24th May, including simulations with and without grass. Values for
temperatures measured at RS (Top) and FT (bottom).

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Further sensitivity analysis was carried out on the decisions made in specifying the
type of small vegetation. In the standard model grass is set on the site where low
vegetation existed by simply altering the export parameters in the automated input
file creation. In the second model, the grass layer was altered to tarmac, although all
larger vegetation, such as trees remained in the model. Both sets of results are plotted
on Figures 4 and 5 and it can be seen there is little variance for a site such as this with
only 35.8% of grass in the specification. The sensitivity of soil type, moisture content,
building parameters and tree dimensions has not been tested here and may be
responsible for the variation in the results.

Figure 5: Comparison to monitor 60m. Variation in temperature over day 2 of the

simulation compared to both results from 24th May and average for 20-24th.

Figure 6: Measured temperatures averaged from the 6 central temperature loggers

read over 2 days, alongside the results from a 2 day simulation from Envi-met.

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Microclimate results for future scenarios

The two site designs were assessed for future climate change resilience based on their
performance during weather conditions predicted for 2050 and 2080. Probabilistic
weather files based on the UK climate projections for the two years were obtained
from the Prometheus project for Sheffield (Eames, Kershaw, & Coley, 2011). For the
simulations, the hottest days were identified in both years and the weather conditions
for both periods used in the analysis. This does result in relatively high wind speeds
because for both years the hottest temperatures corresponded to days with wind
speeds of approximately 4m/s. These are detailed in Table 1.
Envi-met Configuration Value
Validation
2050
2080
Start Simulation at Day
24.06.2050
03.08.2050
12.07.2080
(DD.MM.YYYY)
Wind Speed in 10 m ab. Ground [m/s]
0.9
4.5
4.1
Wind Direction
225
140
250
(0:N..90:E..180:S..270:W..)
Initial Temperature Atmosphere [K] at
290.4
293
294.3
4am
Specific Humidity in 2500 m [g
7
7
7
Water/kg air]
Relative Humidity in 2m [%]
70
80
90
Inside Temperature [K]
293.15
293.15
293.15
Table 1 Envi-met weather configuration file values for 2050 and 2080
Overall results of the average temperature shown at 2 hourly intervals throughout the
day are shown in Figure 7 for 2050 and 2080. The simulations were run for 48 hours
and the results are shown for the second day 8am to 8pm. For 2050, the alternative
design shows a small amount of cooling with a maximum temperature of 25C. The
benefits of the new design become clearer in 2080 where the greater ambient air
temperatures result in greater differences between the two urban designs with 0.5C
temperature difference at the hottest point. The histogram in Figure 8 shows that the
majority of the site in the alternative design is at the lower temperature 26.75C at
2pm, whereas a larger portion of the site is warmer in the existing scenario. The
difference in number of locations with temperatures below and above 26.75C in the
two scenarios is found to be significant with the Pearsons Chi Square test
(2(1)=325.34, p<0.001). The differences in temperature are small, particularly in
comparison to the errors in the validation study. However the two figures clearly show
that differences can be demonstrated using this procedure, and as would be expected
the differences become greater at higher ambient temperatures.

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Figure 7 Average site temperature for existing site and alternative site design for
predicted 2050 and 2080 temperatures

Figure 8 Histogram of temperatures across the site for the hottest time of day (2pm)
in 2080 for both existing and alternative scenarios

Grid dependency
For the final comparison, the overall impact of our designs on average air
temperatures for the whole site is the item of interest, so only average temperatures
across the site were used for comparison. However, because it is possible to
automatically generate Envi-met input files of any resolution, a comparison was also
made to the grid sizing used. A finer grid of 170x170 cells was exported for the original
site plans. Due to the computational time needed to process the larger grid, it was
only possible to carry out simulations for a 24 hour period. Figure 9 shows the
comparison between simulations for day one with a grid of 93 x93 cells on plan
compared to 170x170, a difference between cell size of 8.60m and 4.71m.

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Figure 9 - Comparison of two grid sizes, 93x93 cells and 170x170 cells
The 93x93 grid took just over 31 hours to complete the solution, whereas the 170x170
grid took 168 hours to complete. The results shown in Figure 9 are highly comparable
indicating that the coarser grid with the short, and more feasible computational time is
appropriate. It is worth noting that other authors, who have focused on patterns of
cooling, such as cool air propagating from a park (Chow et al., 2011), have required
much finer grids. For the purpose of understanding implications on average
temperatures however the method presented with the lower grid size is appropriate.

Visualisation of simulation within 3D model

Using the developed data import and graphic shaders, it was possible to create a realtime display of microclimate surface temperatures and differentials overlaid on to the
3D model, as shown in Figure 10. On the left image of Figure 10, surface temperatures
for the 2080 simulation of the alternative design are displayed using more intense red
(lighter) values for hotter surface areas with an 85% blend value of temperature
colouring to existing model colour.
Although the average temperature results are cooler overall, the alternative design
does result in warmer temperatures in certain areas. The right of Figure 10 shows a
snapshot in time from a visualisation of the alternative design in 2080 with shading
used to show the temperature difference between this scenario and the calibration
temperatures. The hotter areas are shown in red (darker areas) and green (lighter
areas) is displayed where it is cooler. Although some larger areas are cooler there are
hot spots that result in warmer temperatures in the alternative scenario. This
highlights the use of visualising the spatial variation in temperature; designs can then
be adapted to provide further mitigation in the warmer areas.

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Figure 10 (left) graphics shader showing 2080 results, (right) differential graphics
shader showing areas of heating and cooling between 2050 and 2080 simulations, both
with 85% blend
Given these results, it can be deemed that graphics card shaders are suitable for
representing real-time display of Envi-met surface temperatures within an interactive
3D visualisation. As the Envi-met results detailed above are for the entire modelled
area, the shader programs overlay the data across the entire area of 3D model, but it
was demonstrated that with extra calculations in the shader programs it is possible to
overlay an arbitrary rectangular area on to the 3D model. This would be useful if a
smaller area than the entire site were needed to be modelled at a higher resolution.
It would have been possible to complete over five iterations of the 93x93 grids in the
time taken to run one 170x170 grid without significantly altering the resultant average
temperature. Therefore, it is suggested to use the smaller grid sizes and the shaders
to identify hot spots that might be improved with further design changes. Using this
approach, designers would also be able to target sub-areas that may need higher
resolution simulations, so that computational time is allocated to areas that require it.
This would move the designer into a more iterative process of controlled design and
test cycles, as shown in Figure 1.

DISCUSSION AND FUTURE WORK

The methodology presented revolves around the ability to move information from one
system to two distinct systems and vice versa. This was in the most part achievable,
but the data held in the Envi-met simulation results was locked within proprietary file
formats. Envi-met comes with its own visualisation tools, but it would be
advantageous to allow easy access to the resultant simulation data through a
programmable interface or through export to a standard well-known format. The
manual extraction process from Envi-met remains the slowest part of this
methodology and was error-prone due to the number of steps required for each
hourly result extraction. It would be much improved if an automatic exporter could be
developed that read the Envi-met results files.
Moving forward, it would seem useful to link multiple simulations in the way Envi-met
has been coupled if, and only if, there is freedom of information between systems.
CityGML is a standard that allows transfer of 3D city models between systems and the
EC INSPIRE standard is an attempt to define an interoperable European spatial data
infrastructure (p. 25) based more on 2D with 3D extensions (Grger & Plmer, 2012).

DRAFT close to final submission

As an alternative to such interoperable data standards, initiatives that allow
programmatic links between different simulations, such as the OpenMI (Moore &
Tindall, 2005) initiative, might also provide a productive avenue. The more modelling
systems that adopt these open standards the easier it will be to move away from silos
of data trapped in one system.
Climate change makes it increasingly necessary to predict the impact of our changes to
urban infrastructure on a variety of outcomes, with often uncertain inputs. Although
the work shown here demonstrates the benefits of linking microclimate simulations to
visualisations, this is only one form of potential analysis. A directly related analysis
which would benefit from incorporation with this procedure would be the water
balance on the site. Integrating multiple landscape analyses together in one system
would be a step towards a functional LIM.
The results presented do not consider the longevity of the vegetation. With climate
change, warmer temperatures and periods of drought may reduce the viability of some
vegetation types. Therefore, planting for UHI mitigation does need to take into
account water and maintenance requirements of the vegetation supplied. Different
types and locations of vegetation will have different effects on the UHI and these
differences can be simulated within Envi-met as demonstrated by (Chow & Brazel,
2012) and (Hien & Jusuf, 2008) although they are not the focus of this paper.
Due to the lack of an automated exporter from Envi-met result files, which significantly
increases the time taken to manually export one layer data from the 3D results, the
graphics shaders have only been developed to visualise the Envi-met surface
temperatures or one layer of atmospheric data at a time. Chow et al., (2011) found
that their model under-predicted temperatures, particularly close to surface, so it
would be a good extension to the system to be able to visualise the entire modelled
atmospheric volume at once. It would be of interest to examine how well simulations
presented in this manner compared to standard techniques of coloured grids or plans.
Given the increase in simulations based on GPU in recent years that have seen reduced
completion time from hours to seconds due to the computational power available on a
single GPU (Richmond, Walker, Coakley, & Romano, 2010), it is also possible that the
calculations performed by the Envi-met system could benefit from such parallelised
acceleration. Not only could this reduce the time taken to analyse the UHI
performance of a design proposal, but running the simulation on the GPU would also
make it possible to visualise the results as the computation is taking place.

CONCLUSIONS
With the likelihood of increasing temperatures due to climate change and the
associated effects on populations that may occur, planners will find it increasingly
necessary to consider microclimate effects when planning landscapes of the future to
ensure resilience to climate change for the populations using them. The results from
the case study shown here indicate benefits in reducing overheating from redesigning
an urban area with bioclimatic principles incorporating green infrastructure. The

DRAFT close to final submission

coupling of 3D visualisation to Envi-met microclimate modelling via 2D parameterised
plans has proven able to test different designs and to provide calibration, sensitivity
testing and prediction of UHI effects whilst reducing the effort required to perform this
task. Importantly, the average air temperature results for this scale were not
significantly affected by changes in low level vegetation such as grass, meaning that
the method is useful for assessing broad large scale changes without requiring the
detailed design. Finally, the methodology presented also provides the possibility of
viewing microclimate simulation results interactively in 3D, although discovering
whether how this may benefit different groups of end users (designers/public) is yet to
be examined.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This paper is based on work undertaken within the URSULA project, funded by the UK
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Grant number: EP/F007388/1).
The authors are grateful for this support and to the URSULA team, especially Laurence
Pattacini for her urban form designs and Mohammad Fahmy for the use of his tree
parameter files. The views presented in the paper are those of the authors and cannot
be taken as indicative in any way of the position of the funders or of colleagues and
partners. Any remaining errors are similarly those of the authors alone.

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