Urban Wind Environment

In the context of urbanization and compact urban living, conventional experience-based planning and design often cannot adequately address the serious environmental issues, such as thermal comfort and air quality. The ultimate goal of this book is to facilitate a paradigm shift from the conventional experience-based ways to a more scientific, evidence-based process of decision making in both urban planning and architectural design stage. This book introduces novel yet practical modelling and mapping methods, and provides scientific understandings of the urban typologies and wind environment from the urban to building scale through real examples and case studies. The tools provided in this book aid a systematic implementation of environmental information from urban planning to building design by making wind information more accessible to both urban planners and architects, and significantly increasing the impact of urban climate information on the practical urban planning and design. This book is a useful reference book to architectural postgraduates, design practitioners and planners, urban climate researchers, as well as policy makers for developing future livable and sustainable cities.

Energy security, rising energy prices (oil, gas, electricity), 'peak oil', environmental pollution, nuclear energy, climate change and sustainable living are hot topics across the globe. Meanwhile, abundant and perpetual wind resources offer opportunities, via recent technological developments, to provide part of the solution to address these key issues. The rapid growth of large-scale wind farm installations has now led to the generation of clean electricity for tens of millions of homes around the world. However, despite the potential to reduce the losses and costs associated with transmission and to use local wind acceleration techniques to improve energy yields, the potential for urban wind energy has yet to be realised. Although there is increasing public interest, the uptake of urban wind energy in suitable areas has been slow. This is in part due to a lack of understanding of key issues such as: available wind resources; technology integration; planning processes (include assessment of environmental impacts and public safety due to close proximity to people and property); energy consumption in buildings versus energy production from turbines; economics (including grants, subsidies, maintenance); and the effect of complex urban windscapes on performance. Urban Wind Energy attempts to illuminate these areas, addressing common concerns highlighting pitfalls, offering real world examples and providing a framework to assess viability in energy, environmental and economic terms. It is a comprehensive guide to urban wind energy for architects, engineers, planners, developers, investors, policy-makers, manufacturers and students as well as community organisations and home-owners interested in generating their own clean electricity.

This book focuses on the urban wind environment of urban center district. Through urban spatial morphology and urban space units it provides in-depth evaluation and research on the correlation between urban spatial morphology indicator and urban wind environment. Based on urban spatial morphology indicators, such as building density, FAR, average building height and wind environment parameter, it conducts quantitative analysis and statistic evaluation to acquire the influence relationship between urban planning indicators and wind speed. In addition, based on the 13 typical urban morphology units it also analyses the different situation of wind environment. Finally it provides the optimized strategies on urban planning, architecture and landscape. It intertwines the quantitative research between wind environment and urban morphology through in-depth analysis and urban microclimate simulation. It makes a valuable contribution for the research on urban environment and urban morphology.

If one surveys the development of wind engineering, one comes to the conclusion that the challenge of urban climatology is one of the most important remaining tasks for the wind engineers. But what distinguishes wind engineering in urban areas from conventional wind engineering? Principally, the fact that the effects studied are usually unique to a particular situation, requiring consideration of the surroundings of the buildings. In the past, modelling criteria have been developed that make it possible to solve environmental problems with great confidence, and studies validated the models: at least in a neutrally stratified atmosphere. The approach adopted in the book is that of applied fluid mechanics, since this forms the basis for the evaluation of the urban wind field. Variables for air quality or loads are problem specific, or even random, and methods for studying them are based on risk analysis, which is also presented. Criteria are developed for a systematic approach to urban wind engineering problems, including parameter studies. The five sections of the book are: Fundamentals of urban boundary layer and dispersion; Forces on complex structures in built-up areas; Air pollution in cities; Numerical solution techniques; and Posters. A subject index is included.

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This book presents numerical and experimental research in the field of wind energy exploitation in urban environments. It comprises a selection of the best papers from the international colloquium “Research and Innovation on Wind Energy Exploitation in Urban Environment” (TUrbWind), held in Riva del Garda, Italy in June 2017. The book includes contributions from different research fields in urban wind resources, wind energy conversion systems, and urban integration, mainly focusing on the following topics: · concepts for urban and open landscape micro wind turbines, · integration of micro wind turbines in existing structures, · built-environment and high-turbulence sites’ impacts on urban wind turbines, · measuring and modeling wind resource in built environments, · rotor performance and wake features of micro wind turbines. It is a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners interested in the integration of wind energy systems and turbines in urban areas.

The majority of the world’s population live in environments with artificially weakened wind as buildings in urban areas form wind-breaks and reduce wind speeds. Anthropogenic heat is also generated and during the summer dense urban areas suffer from the urban heat island effect, a known urban climate problem. This book discusses how to evaluate the urban wind environment, including ventilation performance and thermal comfort. This book is organized in two parts; Wind Environment and the Urban Environment and Criteria for Assessing Breeze Environments. It includes chapters on sea breeze in urban areas; thermal adaptation and the effect of wind on thermal comfort; health risk of exposures; pollutant transport in dense urban areas; legal regulations for urban ventilation and new criteria for assessing the local wind environment. Keywords: urban wind environments, urban heat island, urban climate, land use change, thermal comfort, risk assessment, urban air pollution, urban ventilation

This book presents numerical and experimental research in the field of wind energy exploitation in urban environments. It comprises a selection of the best papers from the international colloquium “Research and Innovation on Wind Energy Exploitation in Urban Environment” (TUrbWind), held in Riva del Garda, Italy in September 2018. The book includes contributions from different research fields in urban wind resources, wind energy conversion systems, and urban integration, mainly focusing on the following topics: · turbine concepts for urban and sub-urban environment; · measuring and modelling wind resource; · rotor aerodynamics, wakes and noise; · design, loads, and supporting structures; · novel shapes and materials; · building concepts for wind energy exploitation; · planning approaches for wind exploitation in urban areas. It is a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners interested in the integration of wind energy systems and turbines in urban areas.