The UrbClim model provides local policy maker with a city wide view and a tool to identify intra-city hot spots and investigate city-scale climate adaptation scenario's for urban development. Many of the more concrete measures such as green roofs, building whitening, water ponds etc impact the microscale environment, for which the UrbClim model is too coarse. Hence, our team is working together with the department of Urban Physics of the Technical University of Eindhoven (TU/e) to develop a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool for urban climate assessement at the microscale.
A multi-scale analysis of the urban heat island effect: From city averaged temperatures to the energy demand of individual buildings. Global warming and the related urban heat island effect are environmental problems of growing concern. A joint effort between VITO and TU/e (group of Prof. Dr. ir. Bert Blocken) where both partners have agreed to bear 50% of the cost of the project, aims to develop and apply modelling tools that investigate these problems on scales ranging from the urban scale down to the scale of individual buildings.