Towards Optimization of Urban Planning and Architectural Parameters for Energy use Minimization in Mediterranean Cities

Abstract

This paper reports observations and first experimental results from a field measurement campaign at the neighbourhood/urban scale, which was conducted in July 2010 in Nicosia (Cyprus) under the European Research Project TOPEUM funded by ERA-NET (Urban-Net Call). The ultimate goal of this work is to investigate the influence of urban design and architectural parameters in the resulting urban climate and the resulting energy usage. The field measurement campaign was carried out in the capital city of Cyprus, Nicosia, reflecting a typical Mediterranean city both in relation to buildings architecture and fabrics, street geometry and neighbourhood morphology. The field measurements include meteorological measurements as well as on-ground and aerial thermography, covering a range of spatial scales, from local-street canyon to meso-scale. The measurements record the meteorology, the thermal response of the buildings in the field site area and the resulting local microclimate particularly in the street.

CFD simulation of urban microclimate: Validation using high-resolution field measurements

“…The average and maximum building height is about 8.1 m and 45.5 m (Shakolas Tower), respectively. The plan area density λ p is about 0.40 (Mouzourides et al, 2014;Neophytou et al, 2011). The width of the streets ranges from 6 m to 10 m, where the aspect ratio of the street canyons (width to height) ranges from 0.5 to 1.…”

“…A series of on-site measurements was conducted in July 2010 inside the area of interest, within the framework of the TOPEUM project (Neophytou et al, 2011). Through an extensive multi-scale and multithemed measurement campaign, data of air temperature, wind speed and surface temperature were collected at different locations inside the case study area for a period of 19 days.…”

“…Urban thermal microclimate and heat stress can be studied by numerical simulations with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). CFD is increasingly used for a wide range of urban microclimate studies (Lai et al, 2019;Toparlar et al, 2017) focusing on wind flow around buildings (Gousseau et al, 2013;Kikumoto et al, 2018;Li et al, 2015;Stathopoulos and Tominaga, 2007), pedestrian thermal comfort (Blocken, 2014;Gao et al, 2018;Neophytou et al, 2011;Tominaga et al, 2015;Toparlar et al, 2015), pollutant dispersion (Buccolieri et al, 2010;Hang et al, 2012;He et al, 2017;Kubilay et al, 2017;Panagiotou et al, 2013;Tominaga and Stathopoulos, 2011), etc. CFD provides whole flow-field data of the target parameters in the area of interest, and offers the advantage that the individual and combined impacts of different physical processes can be assessed.…”

“…This is important because performance indicators used in urban microclimate research in most cases largely depend on the complex interplay between different climatic variables. Therefore, onsite measurement data of air temperature, surface temperature and wind speed inside a real complex urban area under the TOPEUM project (Neophytou et al, 2011(Neophytou et al, , 2013) are adopted. These data were obtained during an extended period by a number of different field measurement campaigns and activities.…”

The effect of soil sealing on the urban heat island phenomenon

“…26 The UHII was found to be above 4 C, while the coastline cites were found to be less affected, with intensities around 1.5 to 3.5 C. The spatio-temporal variation of the UHI intensity for selected heat wave events also indicated that the highest intensities were experienced within the areas of the urban fabric. The value of the UHII in the city of Nicosia is also verified in the work of Neophytou et al 27 Field measurements allowed the investigation of the influence of urban design and architectural parameters in the resulting urban climate and the resulting energy usage in buildings. The surface temperature of the building materials not only showed the impact of the building materials on the intensity of the UHII but it was also concluded that the contribution of thermal radiation, as well as of the anthropogenic emissions in the street canyons led to important temperature increases within the urban fabric of the city.…”