4.2
A Method for Inventorying Urban Morphology
Richard Ellefsen, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA; and R. M. Cionco
A method has been devised and used to measure and construct an inventory of a wide variety of physical attributes of the urban environment in support of high resolution wind modeling on the micro-scale. This effort has been conducted for ten domestic and foreign cities over a period of nine years. The method records data by various-sized resolution cells in a raster format in accordance with Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates. While the data have been generalized to one hectare (100m x 100m) and quarter hectare cells (50m x 50m), discrete morphological surface features as small as 5m x 5m are recorded for each quarter hectare resolution cell. Remote sensing techniques have been employed, especially the interpretation of 1m USGS Digital Orthophoto Quads. The physical attributes being recorded are: 1) the nature of buildings (height, type, footprint, and roof type and reflectivity), 2) nature of vegetation (height, type, footprint), and 3) simple surfaces such as roads, parking lots, water, and bare soil (type, height, footprint, and 'pavement' reflectivity). The data are well suited for wind flow modeling and may be usable for heat island mitigation studies. Large areas of cities have been recorded in terms of the downtown as well as to include suburbia. Recent studies are prepared for 1) downtown Washington, DC in support of contingency planning during the 2001 inauguration activities, and 2) Salt Lake City in support of the 2002 Winter Olympics activities. Examples of data sets will be shown and discussed
Session 4, Urban Surface Databases
Monday, 20 May 2002, 3:30 PM-5:15 PM
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