The achievement of the targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions set by the Paris Agreements and the Swiss federal law on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (CO2 law) requires massive use of renewable energies, which cannot be achieved without their adoption by the general public. The solar cadaster developed as part of the INTERREG G2 Solar project is intended to assess the solar potential of buildings at the scale of Greater Geneva—for both industrial buildings and for individual residential buildings—at a resolution of 1 m. The new version of the solar cadaster is intended to assess the solar potential of roofs, as well as that of vertical facades. The study presented here aims to validate this new version through a comparison with results obtained with two other simulation tools that are widely used and validated by the scientific community. The good accordance with the results obtained with ENVI-met and DIVA-for-Rhino demonstrates the capability of the radiative model developed for the solar cadaster of Greater Geneva to accurately predict the radiation levels of building facades in configurations with randomly distributed buildings (horizontally or vertically).

Urban analysis at different spatial scales (micro- and mesoscale) of local climate conditions is required to test typical artificial urban boundaries and related climate hazards such as high temperatures in built environments. The multitude of finishing materials and sheltering objects within built environments produce distinct patterns of different climate conditions, particularly during the daytime. The combination of high temperatures and intense solar radiation strongly perturb the environment by increasing the thermal heat stress at the pedestrian level. Therefore, it is becoming common practice to use numerical models and tools that enable multiple design and planning alternatives to be quantitatively and qualitatively tested to inform urban planners and decision-makers. These models and tools can be used to compare the relationships between the micro-climatic environment, the subjective thermal assessment, and the social behaviour, which can reveal the attractiveness and effectiveness of new urban spaces and lead to more sustainable and liveable public spaces. This review article presents the applications of selected environmental numerical models and tools to predict human thermal stress at the mesoscale (e.g., satellite thermal images and UrbClim) and the microscale (e.g., mobile measurements, ENVI-met, and UrbClim HR) focusing on case study cities in mid-latitude climate regions framed in two European research projects.