Application of LCZ to Wind Environment Studies

The rise of mega- and high-density compact cities are now irreversible trends of human urban development. While megacities and high-density urban living may make lives more convenient and society more economically efficient, they pose various environmental challenges, especially as increasingly dense, complex and interdependent urban systems leave cities vulnerable and sensitive to climate variability and change. Climate threats come mainly in the form of poor air quality, wind storms, heat waves, drought and floods. Flowing from these are a range of possible health impacts, including death, physical injury, heat-related illness, vector and water-borne disease and mental illness. To improve the urban ventilation environment for mitigating those negative influences caused by climate change and rapid urbanization process, it is critical to understand the distributions of the air temperature and air pollution in the complex urban context. Two empirical studies on wind environment utilized local climate zone (LCZ) in Hong Kong, China and Sendai, Japan were illustrated, separately. The research contents mainly include: (1) The influences of urban morphology on air pollution distribution by adopting the LCZ scheme and mobile measurement; (2) applying LCZ scheme to land-sea breeze analysis based on fixed measurement, and (3) wind-sensitive planning utilizing Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model integrated with LCZ.