Studying the effects of a forest model in a numerical study of atmospheric dispersion using FEFLO-Urban

The need for detailed models to study the transport and dispersion of chemical, biological, or nuclear (C/B/N) agents has been the center of attention for more than a decade. The increasing computational power combined with the improvement of algorithms has made CFD models attractive tools to study atmospheric releases at urban scales. These models include enhanced levels of detail of building geometry and terrain description for large areas of cities. However, the inclusion of forest or groups of trees has not been fully utilized in many of the current simulations of the urban settings. We proposed the inclusion of an existing forest model into the CFD application FEFLO-Urban. The forest model used in FEFLO-Urban is based on a porosity approach. This type of model requires knowing the profile of the leaf area versus height. To illustrate the importance of including trees in the dispersion of pollutants in urban settings, the model will be applied to study different scenarios of atmospheric dispersion in the George Mason University Fairfax Campus. The dispersion scenarios will consider both the inclusion and exclusion of the forest in the analysis. The difference of dispersion patterns from these two scenarios will be analyzed for different leaf area profiles.