Research output per year
Research output per year
Project: LVVN project
A prototype application has been developed to assist in city planning processes where a water body is considered to be included as an urban element. The tool allows evaluation of water temperature dynamics in the urban environment. It thereby can help to assess possible positive or negative consequences of water temperature variations, like cooling versus warming of the urban atmosphere and undesirable exceedance of water temperature thresholds.
The tool is based on a simple, but physically realistic model of the summer season energy budget of a pond in a rural environment. The model has been extended to account for modifications of the energy budget due to urban structures. In the present version, the user can specify various characteristics of the neighbourhood around the water body, like average building height and the fractions of built area and green cover. From these, the model estimates urban effects on weather. The user can also specify the depth of the water body and may choose air temperature to be consistent with one of the Dutch climate scenarios (KNMI’06). After calculation of the energy budget of the water body, graphical feedback is provided on water temperature relative to air temperature, highlighting events like nighttime warming and exceedance of a temperature threshold.
At present, two versions of a prototype of the tool are available: one as smartphone application (Android) and another one as a webtool in the testing environment of the Dutch Climate Adaptation Atlas. The model underlying the tool performs well in the rural environment. However, in particular the performance regarding urban modification of the boundary conditions requires further evaluation. Furthermore, the interface needs more extensive testing. Depending on user feedback further scientific development of the model may be implemented as well as extension of the possibilities of the tool and the interface.
Status | Finished |
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Effective start/end date | 1/01/13 → 31/12/13 |
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review