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Project modules

The LUCID project is divided into five project modules.

Please click on the links below to find out more about each of these.

Project module 1
Model development

Project module 2
Monitoring and testing the validity of the model

Project module 3
Using the model to explore the relationships between energy use/urban form/local temperature

Project module 4
Application of the temperature and pollution model to explore impacts on health

Project module 5
Dissemination activities and writing of the final report

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Project module 1
Model development (led by Professor Stephen Belcher)

Purpose:

To develop state-of-the-art methods for calculating local climate and air quality in the urban environment.

Description:

This part of the project will involve integration of CERC’s ADMS-Urban model and the Reading Urban Model to develop a new tool for urban microclimates for use in planning, design and research applications.

The Reading Model calculates the thermodynamic energy flux over urban surfaces, typically on tiles of 1km x 1km, accounting for shadowing and reflection by buildings on the radiative fluxes, storage of heat in the building fabric and transport of heat into the atmospheric boundary layer. The model will be developed to incorporate the effects of vegetated surfaces and bodies of open water. The urban part of the model will also be developed to represent greening of roofs and street planting.

ADMS will be developed to incorporate a more advanced treatment of surface features (e.g. buildings) on the airflow and local fluxes of heat and moisture.

The two models will then be linked. Variables calculated by the Reading model will be used as boundary conditions for ADMS. The final system will allow calculation of temperature variations at high spatial resolution (hundreds of metres) brought about by differing land use and building layout types.

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Project module 2
Monitoring and testing the validity of the model (led by Professor Mike Davies)

Purpose:

To test the new model against temperature measurements obtained from an extensive monitoring programme.

Description:

The model will be configured for London and compared with sets of empirical data. A three-dimensional representation of London’s built form will be drawn from the existing Virtual London model developed at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (UCL). The character of the ground surfaces will be determined from aerial photographs and linked to the Virtual London model.

An integrated set of temperature measurements will be gathered from:

  • An existing fixed measurement dataset of 80 locations within the Greater London area over an 18 month period;
  • The London Air Quality Network (LAQN);
  • Mobile sensors installed in a group of taxis with associated GPS technology;
  • Remotely sensed satellite data;
  • Supplementary fixed location temperature gathering experiments in selected locations.

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Project module 3
Using the model to explore the relationships between energy use/urban form/local temperature (led by Professor Philip Steadman)

Purpose:

To understand the relationships between energy use, built form, land use and local outdoor temperature and to use the understanding gained to devise design strategies for controlling those temperatures.

Description:

The detailed description of urban built form (project module 2) will be combined with existing data on traffic emissions, activities within buildings, census records, energy use. These can be used to derive typical levels of energy use for different activities and building types, which can be reconciled with gas and electricity supply data. This module will build on previous work which investigated the impacts of predicted climate change on buildings.

A programme of statistical analysis will be carried out to relate the various descriptors of the urban built environment to the predictions of external temperatures, humidities and air flows from the model developed in project module 1. The findings of this statistical work will then be used to develop guidelines for urban design and planning with a view to moderating local temperatures and encouraging air movement.

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Project module 4
Application of the temperature and pollution model to explore impacts on health (led by Dr Paul Wilkinson)

Purpose:

To use the local climate model to quantify variation in the risk of heat-related mortality within London and to estimate the potential future burdens of heat-related mortality over coming decades.

Description:

The model developed in project module 1 will be evaluated for assessing vulnerability to the health impacts of heat waves in London. Four datasets will be linked:

  • Modelled micro-variations in temperature and airborne pollutants;
  • Daily mortality data geo-referenced using full postcodes;
  • Socio-demographic characteristics;
  • Data on the characteristics of domestic properties.

These data will be linked spatially using a GIS database. The analysis will entail a combination of simple graphical/tabular presentation and more sophisticated time-series regression. The sensitivity of patterns to model assumptions will then be investigated. A number of illustrative policies relating to urban planning will then be specified. For each of these, the urban climate model will be used to predict temperatures under future climate change scenarios.

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Project module 5
Dissemination activities and writing of the final report (led by Professor Mike Davies)

Purpose:

To effectively disseminate the key findings of the project in association with the project’s end users and to engage a wide end user community with the project.

Description:

The end users involved with the project will help direct the production of a short summary document. This summary will be issued to invitees to a series of focussed workshops.

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