Dispersion in the downtown Oklahoma City domain: comparisons between the Joint Urban 2003 data and the RUSTIC/MESO models

ITT Industries, Advanced Engineering and Sciences has developed two models to predict air flow and dispersion in urban environments. The first model (RUSTIC) is a fast running urban air flow code that rapidly converges to a numerical solution to a modified set of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. The model also includes a k-ù turbulence model and atmospheric stability. The second model (MESO) is a mesoscale Lagrangian particle transport and diffusion code that can predict concentrations of a released chemical or biological agent.

Comparisons are made between the models and the Joint Urban 2003 data set in the downtown Oklahoma City urban domain. Specific comparisons are made between tracer concentrations predicted by MESO, and winds and turbulent kinetic energy predicted by RUSTIC. RUSTIC is also run with varying atmospheric stabilities to better capture the dispersion during unstable and stable atmospheric conditions.