Assessing the Urban Microclimate: Introducing innovative modelling techniques

This paper introduces a new EU-funded research project ("PRECis- assessing the Potential for Renewable Energy in Cities") and summarises the findings of a recently completed project ("Project ZED- towards Zero Emission urban Development"). Project ZED demonstrated the potential of defining key urban form characteristics, using image processing software, and linking these to environmental performance of a section of a city, assessed using computer and physical simulation. Project PRECis goes on to refine and validate this work by relating the theoretical work to actual urban projects as well as microclimatic and energy use data. The result of the research is the development of a simplified urban bioclimatic design tool which responds to intermediate or neighbourhood scale issues