The effect of urban geometry of London on pedestrian level wind speeds - A quantitative analysis

Abstract eng:
Urban geometry influences almost exclusively the wind speeds at lower levels of the urban canopy layer. Since large metropolitan cities around the world are dealing with a rapid development over the past few decades with increasing building heights and built densities, the evaluation of urban wind environment has become a major concern. With a focus on London, this paper pursues, through a quantitative analysis and statistical studies, to assess the magnitude of the impact of urban geometry on wind speed ratio (Ur), indicating the characteristics of urban geometry that dominate wind speeds around buildings. The wind speed ratio is derived out of studies based on existing context which represent more accurately the complexity of urban morphology and improves understanding and assessment of urban wind environment compared to those studies which examine simplified building geometries. The effect of indicators which describe urban geometry such as frontal area ratio, plan area ratio, height variability as it served with standard deviation of buildings’ height, built volume, built density, urban permeability and compactness on pedestrian level winds was investigated through Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations over twenty case studies on squared plots of 1km2 area. Density and compactness show significant relation with the resultant wind speed ratios at street level demonstrating the necessity that their effect needs to be taken into consideration during the design stage of cities' further expansion while urban permeability and height variability proved to be the less significant.

• Export as: BibTeX | MARC | MARCXML | DC | EndNote | NLM | RefWorks
• Add to your basket