Extending Mesoscale and Global Meteorological Model Outputs to Assess Urban-Scale Impacts using WUDAPT

The WUDAPT (World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools, http://www.wudapt.org/) is currently underway (Mills et al., 2015). WUDAPT collect, generate and provide gridded urban scale model-ready urban canopy parameters, including buildings, street canyon, impervious and vegetative surface fractions, surface roughness and reflectivity details, anthropogenic heating, and sky view factor (SVF) for all the world’s major cities (with resolution of 120m). We present a conceptual design on the use of WUDAPT parameters, in a post-processing mode of mesoscale meteorological models, to quantify urban scale metrics that reveal city characteristics on impacts associated with assessing heat stress risks to human health (e.g. Hanna et al., 2015), morbidity, energy, and human activity for selected cities, at high resolution grids. We present an interface to calculate appropriate indices using the model outputs such as dry bulb and wet bulb temperatures, surface radiation, and humidity, to develop appropriate urban indices using the WUDAPT parameters. For example WUDAPT -SVF values are expected to vary considerably throughout a city. With WUDAPT, the within grid heat stress index in operational mesoscale models could be spatially conditioned (weighted) with the spatial maps of SVF at the higher resolutions, enhancing its benefits for heat tress advisories, for assessing of impacts on mortality and morbidity, demand on energy, and to human activities. Overall, WUDAPT can be useful not only as input into a mesoscale and global weather/climate models to define urban canopy parameters, but it is also a useful dataset to independently consider with model output for an urban application of interest.

References

Hanna, A.F., J.S. Ching, and J. Pinto: Characteristics of heat wave impacts for major cities in the US under current and future climate conditions, 9^th International conference on Urban Climate, Proceedings, GD2-ICUC9, Toulouse, France, July, 2015.

Mills, G., J. Ching, J., L. See, and B. Bechtel: An introduction to the WUDAPT project, 9^th International conference on Urban Climate, Proceedings, GD2-ICUC9, Toulouse, France, July, 2015.